


Mulholland

by AmbiguouslyAmoral



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: And Much More - Freeform, And angst, And now with more smut, Assassination attempts, Author has vague idea of where this is going, Basically the whole gang will be here at some point, Confident!Rhys, Corporate Espionage, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, I'm just trying to make sure that these two assholes deserve each other, Jack is bad at feelings, M/M, Rhys is bad at life, Sassy!Rhys, Slow Burn, Surprise characters from Bl3, Vaughn is the best bro, Will be adding more tags as the story progresses, Yvette is judging all the men, and many others - Freeform, folks, there's going to be a lot of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 68,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbiguouslyAmoral/pseuds/AmbiguouslyAmoral
Summary: Rhys's ability to be at the wrong place at the wrong time kicks into high gear when he accidentally on purpose stops an assassination attempt on Handsome Jack's life.Or, how Jack becomes a slightly better person and Rhys gets a little worse, and they learn to meet somewhere in the middle.





	1. If You Remember this Tomorrow (you're doing it wrong)

**Author's Note:**

> Woo-ho! A Borderlands Fic, yeehaw. This story takes place in some weird nebulous realm between Bl2 and Bl3 and any changes to the canon will be stated in story so ya'll aren't lost. Enjoy!

The programming department was located on the 12th floor on the west side of the Hyperion owned Helios Space Station. Most employees referred to the levels as either 10W or 8E for convenience, so the programming department was said to live on the 12W floor. A little known fact, only really known by those that worked on the floor, is that there is a small room tucked near one of the elevators mislabeled as an “Emergency Exit”. Rhys doesn’t know who first discovered the mistake, but having apparently tried to use the exit found that it did not lead to a stairwell, but a room. 

Well, it was more of a balcony, because another little known fact (this one only known to those that worked on Helios) was that there was a force field surrounding the station. It wasn’t officially called a force field, but it covered the station in a 3-foot shimmering barrier. Everyone figured it was made of the same technology that Anshin used to make their shields just on a bigger scale, but what made it important was not that it protected, but that it allowed for people to actually stand in space. 

The 3-foot barrier kept in the artificial oxygen that was generated on Helios, so one could essentially stand on balcony three feet out into space without suffocating. It also kept a weak form of gravity, so you also didn’t float away. 

This led to many of the more reckless (re: drunk) workers to find places to leap off of since the artificial gravity simply lowered them back down to the bottom of the H as long as they didn’t jump further out than that 3-foot gap--people referred to it as the quickest way to the 1st floor. 

This is one of the things that made the programmer’s balcony special.

The second thing is that because it was never officially included in the structural blueprints (someone down the line checked) there were no cameras, allowing for workers to do whatever for the short ten-minutes breaks without the fear of big brother. Over the years, workers had added things to area so there were a few chairs, a wonky table, a couple plants and an out-of-date TV that only got the channel that played old game shows.

It is on a Friday at 11am, where one Rhys, company man, can be found. 

He was wearing his normal attire: teal shirt, tucked in red tie, striped pants, and well-worn boots. There were a few other works around him taking up the chairs, so Rhys was leaned up against the railing overlooking the hazy atmosphere swirling around the planet beneath. If he looked forward he would see the opposite pillar of the H lit up like the skyscrapers littering the industrialized planets. 

He liked imagining what was happening in Pandora, picturing the violence and lawless abandon that made the planet a desirable destination to others of shaky moral dispositions. Not saying that he wasn’t one of them, working for Hyperion had the effect of shifting anyone away from black and white morality, but he knew his skills at wielding weapons was less than zero making him a terrible candidate as a resident of Pandora.

He would stick to his world of blackmail, corporate espionage, and tax evasion. 

The balcony was also the one place that Rhys could sate his addiction: bringing the cigarette to his lips and inhaling the cancerous smoke like a breath of fresh air. He held it in his chest like one would weed, before pushing out the smoke through his mouth. 

His mother had not approved of the habit he had formed in university and neither had Yvette or Vaughn, which meant this was the only time and place in his life where he could smoke without someone yelling and scolding him. 

Nicotine was very low on the list of things that would kill him anyways; he’s pretty sure Vasquez will get to him before the damn cigs do. And also, Rhys thought as he took another long drag, it had been a long fucking week. Between Henderson’s complete incompetence and Vasquez’s boot-licking, Rhys was ready to throw himself off this balcony in rage as he was, apparently, the only associate programmer actually doing his job. 

Okay, so there were only two associate programmers, but as stated before, Vasquez was useless when it came to actually doing work and Henderson hated Rhys for some reason, so he was constantly left with doing the work of two people and the damn executive, himself. 

It had been especially hard this week, because quarterly reports were going out at the end of the month and Handsome Jack had the habit of air-locking people from the lowest performing division at random. 

Now, Rhys would love to purposefully do a poor job and watch Henderson and Vasquez float out into space, but there was also a strong chance that Handsome would send Rhys with them just because, and Rhys like having his body warm and breathing. 

In conclusion, Henderson and Vasquez were The Worst ™ and now Rhys was stuck doing their jobs on top of his own of, you know actually programming things for Hyperion like guns, shields, coffee makers, or really anything they were told to. 

Rhys grumbled to himself, and stubbed out his cigarette, contemplated for a millisecond before grabbing a second and lighting it. He was going to be working all night anyways, he reasoned for taking an extra-long break. 

“Hey-yo, kiddos!” Handsome Jack’s overly enthusiastic voice filtered through the Helios-wide speaker system just as Rhys was taking a second drag. “I know, I know you’re all wondering: gosh, I haven’t heard from Handsome Jack in a while and I missed him so much. Well, not to worry, I’m back on Helios so you can stop crying into your pillows every night.”

Rhys rolled his eyes.

He would admit that when he first starting working here, he had looked up to Handsome Jack. Who wouldn’t? He ran the largest, most successful company in the galaxy, was rich beyond measure, rumored to have opened an actual vault, and had people begging for his attention. So, yeah, Rhys maybe wanted to be the man and yeah, he had a few (a lot) of posters of the man.

The hero worship had left about year into the job, once Rhys realized that he was always going to just be a company man and nothing more. Handsome Jack just became another dream that he abandoned in the face of reality. 

And the man’s speeches were really annoying. 

“—and killed some bandits, it was pretty awesome, but enough about how much of goddamn hero I am; I have more important things to do than tell you things you already know. I’m off to fire some moonshots with the weapon I created, so later, kiddos, and remember: only those that do their jobs and work hard will survive,” the announcement cut off with his fading laughter. 

Rhys stubbed out his second cigarette and reluctantly pushed off the railing to leave. The balcony was empty now, the other workers having left sometime during the speech; Rhys still had to weave between the table and chairs to reach the exit. He made sure to shut the door behind him, just in case someone not from programming wandered up here and saw their secret break room. 

He passed the elevator doors as they opened and someone exited, heading in the direction Rhys had come from. The programmer turned left entering what would be considered the main hall, restaurants lining the left side and the right having doors to various offices; Rhys’s was at the very end of the hall marked by double doors that led to the main programming department. 

There were quite a few people loitering in the hall either eating or drinking, having taken an early lunch. Too many people worked in programming for Rhys to recognize everyone, but there were a couple of people that he sent a small wave when they made eye contact. 

Just before he reached the double doors, he patted his pockets double checking he had his comm, cig pack, and lighter as a habit. He found two in his front pocket but not the third. 

Rhys cursed, vaguely remembering putting his lighter down on the railing, but not picking it back up. Classic lighters like that were hard to find and he would be forced to order one from another planet if he didn’t go back for it. 

He sighed and turned around. 

Whatever, he was already late what was a few more minutes? 

He did half jog to try and make up the time, though. Even that small amount of exercise made him huff and Rhys thought that maybe he should start hitting one of the many gyms located on the station as he pushed open the emergency exit door. 

He spotted the silver lighter right away and moved to get it when something else caught his vision. Looking back, he doesn’t know exactly what caused him pause, because all he could see was the man’s back. It wasn’t strange for another person to be here, people took breaks all throughout the day, but something about him seemed off; maybe it was the stiff posture? 

Usually, the people here melted into a boneless pile for ten minutes, but his shoulders were tight as he hunched over the railing.

Rhys took another step into the space, trying to peer and see more of the man. 

That was when Rhys saw that the man was not hunched over the railing, but leaning into the sights of a rifle. 

People having guns wasn’t all that strange, but having one so blatantly out and not being a loader bot was very illegal. A lot of technology on Helios was pretty fragile and it wasn’t a good idea to go around shooting shit if you didn’t know what you were doing, add in the paranoia that at any moment your underling would shoot you for your position had led to a formal no gun policy on the station. 

Despite that, Rhys had known people that carried a hidden pistol or Jacobs revolver, but not a whole sniper rifle. The thing was pitch black, almost perfectly blending into the color of space, except for the shiny quality and the grey scope, which the man was now leaning into and adjusting. He shifted the rifle after a few seconds, aiming it towards the central bridge that connected the two parts of the H. 

He was clearly enacting a revenge fantasy and had clearly not heard Rhys. 

Rhys was frozen after taken that second half step onto the balcony. He knew people were killed all the time on Helios, but being a witness to it was a completely different feeling. Rhys was pretty numb each time it was announced that another executive or associate bit the dust (usually at the hands of Jack himself), but the uncomfortable swirl of emotions in chest were the complete opposite of numb right now. 

He felt nervous and hot all at once like his body was trying to get him to act but his brain was fighting it, leading him to shake in place. 

The majority of Helios would leave and report the crime later. 

Rhys could do that. He glanced at the door it was only a few steps away until he was back in the hallway and another few steps until he was around other people. He could easily run back out and call for help. 

Click.

Rhys’s head snapped back at the sound as the man released the safety, staring down the sights. His hands wrapped around the gun expertly, keeping it steady on the railing. He adjusted his stance again and Rhys realized that it was because he was following the target. 

Rhys doesn’t know what made him move, but in between one breath and the next, he was propelling his body forward. He crashed into the shooter just as his finger pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening up close and Rhys felt himself wincing away from it even as he wrapped his arms around the shooter’s body and pulled him to the ground.  
What ensued was a scuffle of confusion: Rhys not really knowing how to fight and the shooter not sure what he was fighting against. 

Rhys didn’t really have a plan passed tackling the man, so once they hit the ground he just tried to keep a hold. He was quickly overpowered, the shooter being quite strong and once he realized he was fighting another person, sent a sharp elbow into Rhys’s ribcage. 

Rhys grunted and then took the man’s skull to his face as the shooter threw his head back. Rhys automatically let go to clutch his broken nose and the man was on him in an instant, sending a solid punch to his stomach and slamming Rhys’s head into the floor with a boot to the face. 

The succession of pain was so quick that Rhys was left wondering what happened. All the breath had left his lungs in a whoosh, pain radiated out from the center of his face, and his vision was swimming between black and swirls of color. He distantly remembers reaching out for something, anything to get away or make the pain ease, but hands twisted in his shirt and then he was being lifted up. 

The change in elevation made the swimming visions worse and Rhys couldn’t even make out the face of the man holding him. He tried blinking the man into focus but the image kept being replaced with black every time his lids closed. 

“—you?!” He was speaking, Rhys could feel the vibrations through his arm.

“I, I,” Rhys tried telling him that he didn’t know what he was saying, but his tongue felt like lead in his mouth. It made the man shake him and yell at him again in words that Rhys mostly felt rather than heard. 

“—ruined—children of the—kill you—”

The last words had Rhys’s attention. In a sharp rush, his vision and hearing came back probably from adrenaline that had flooded his system as a delayed reaction to the fight. His body was bent backwards over the railing, the man holding him was young, tan, and had strange tattoos running up neck, his face was twisted in a mixture of rage and fear; his teeth clenched, his jaw tight in determination, but his eyes wide and flicking between Rhys and the door behind. 

A pressure had Rhys looking down to see a gun pressed into his sternum. The man’s finger was already on the trigger and Rhys only had a moment to let out a small “no,” before the bullet tore through his flesh and then he was being shoved over the edge.

He saw his cybernetic arm reaching up to grasp the railing in slow motion and missing it by millimeters and then he was falling in real time. The last thing he remembers is screaming before black overtakes his vision. 

\--

Jack clicked off the PA system, still chuckling to himself. God, he loved making speeches and sending the little ants squirreling away; he liked to imagine the fear in their faces every time his voice cracked through the speakers (he used it quite often to call out specific employees to be fired and/or killed). 

He leaned back against his desk in satisfaction. 

He had missed this room; the looming statues, the beautiful view, the golden chair, the sprawling rugs and the marbled floors. He loved the dormant power of a place like this; it wasn’t the power that came from holding a man’s life in your hands, but one that crept up on a person as they looked over the trophies and wealth to realize that they were not in the same league as himself. 

He ran a hand over the imported wood of the desk. Supposedly the wood came from a planet not even in this system and cost the same price as a house to be sent over. It had been worth it, the thing still smelled like a rainforest whenever he neared it. 

“Uh, s—sir,” his assistant, Naka-something interrupted his musings. 

He was a sniveling thing of a man. Short, greasy hair, ill-fitting clothes, and had the tendency to stare unnerving intensely at Jack. But he was a good assistant, always kept Jack’s schedule perfect and anticipated his needs before Jack even voiced them. He had such shit assistants before this man that he could put up with the strange amount of admiration if it meant he got his coffee without asking for it. 

“Yeah, what?” He acted annoyed just to see the little man stutter. 

“Uh, yo—you have a m—meeting with R&D in uh,” the man shuffled a collection of papers to his right hand, so he bring up his watch, “in five minutes, sir.” 

Jack groaned. “Ugh, can’t we reschedule it? I don’t think I can sit through 2 hours of those brainless twits presenting me with nothing new. I mean, I invent better shit in my sleep and I give them weeks to work a new designs and what do I get: toasters.”

Naka-something winced at the memory, yeah, that hadn’t been pretty. He still couldn’t believe Mr. Richardson had stood up and presented that blueprint to Handsome Jack. It had taken him a minute to realize that the man had been taking about a toaster and once he did, Naka-something had dropped his head to the desk and waited for the fallout. 

“We’ve already rescheduled it twice and you’ve been away on Pandora…” the assistant tried to reason. 

Jack pushed himself up off the desk and sighed. “You are lucky I am in a good mood,” he said, clapping the man hard on the shoulder. “I was going to shoot some shit, but I guess I can do that afterwards. So, let them know I’m coming. Oh! Better yet, tell them I’ll be there in like a minute and to be ready; that’ll get them scrambling.” 

His assistant moved the papers to his other arm to pull out his comm unit. He quickly typed a few messages while trying to keep up with his boss who was already half-way across the room. 

“Keep up, knick-knack,” Jack hollered over his shoulder striding through the waiting room, nodding at Halley, his receptionist. They ignored him, but that was made them so good at their job, making them the longest and best receptionist Jack had ever had. “And keep up the good work, Halley; say hi to the kids for me.” 

They didn’t respond and Jack smirked to himself. 

Knick-knack was terrified of Halley and could often be seen sending nervous glances their way whenever he had to wait for Jack to let him enter his office, which is why he sped up his shuffle to get passed them quicker. 

Halley didn’t notice either man too busy flipping through the latest fashion mag: it was fashion week on Neptune-2 and they were determined to keep up with the trends this year.  
“R&D have been informed of the meeting, sir,” his assistant huffed out, finally catching up enough to walk on Jack’s left slightly behind his steps. Jack didn’t like it when he walked directly beside him, said it felt like he was walking with a child. 

“Good, tell them I’m in a bad mood just to ramp up the tension.”

He was already typing away on his comm unit. “Yes, sir.” 

Even though they were walking through the executive floors, people still scurried out of Handsome Jack’s way as he headed towards the meeting rooms on the west side, his office being on the east. It was set up that way so that the meeting room was closer to the actual R&D department, since most of their presentations required practical demonstrations in their testing rooms. The meeting rooms on the east side were reserved for programming, sales and marketing, future strategies, and real-estate. 

And Jack liked the walk, because it brought him across The Bridge. It didn’t have an official name, but Jack always capitalized the words in his head—it truly was one of the coolest things on Helios. 

He felt himself walk a little faster now that he was approaching it. The entire thing from ceiling, wall, to floor was glass, which made it seem as if you were walking across space itself. Jack had originally fell in love with the deserts of Pandora because of the secrets and treasure it held, but he found a home in Helios. 

Even now, he found his eyes straying from the path ahead to travel around, peering out at the stars that surrounded them on all sides. And since it was the only connection between the east and west sides of the station, it was always packed with people and Jack liked to be reminded of how many people he owned. So, he got two for one whenever he strode across The Bridge. 

“S—sir?” his assistant called. 

Jack growled at the interruption and instead of continuing to walk like he would normally do, he stopped and whirled. “What?”

His assistant never got to answer because there was a crack and then Jack was sent stumbling forward, a sharp pain exploded on his right side with a flash of heat following it a second after. Jack raised a hand to shoulder knowing that when it came away it was going to be bloody; he had been shot too many times to not know the feeling. 

His hand was red. 

His assistant screamed, which drew the attention of everyone who hadn’t heard the bullet breaking through the glass. 

Jack growled, cursing his assistant, and drew his pistol. He scanned the crowd, looking for any person that wasn't scared or running away, but no one stood out. And there wasn't any more gunfire, so he ignored the confused panic of the people around him and instead bent down. Pulled out a knife and started to pry the bullet out from the floor where it was lodged. It came loose with little leverage, having lost most of its momentum when it went through his shoulder. He tossed the bullet aside, not interested in it, but the marking on the ground.

It was angled and from it, Jack guessed that it came from above. He spun from where he was crouched and looked up, searching for the spot where it broke through the glass and finding it a beat later. All he had to do was follow the spider-webbing that had cracked through the panes to find the origin. 

And now Jack felt the anger boiling up inside of him: someone had tried to fucking snipe him. They couldn’t even be bothered to kill him face to face, but decided to cowardly shoot at him from a distance. It was insulting and Jack would have been extra pissed if he had actually died like that; how fucking lame. 

“Oh my god!” his assistant’s nasally voice filtered in through his thoughts of revenge, but he wasn’t looking at Jack.

One hand was covering his mouth and the other was pointed up above. And now that Jack was back in the present, he could hear a series of screams and the distant clank of loader bots. Out of curiosity, Jack followed his assistant’s finger and the source of everyone’s sudden panic and his assistance’s fearful eyes made sense.

Because laying on top of The Bridge was the body of a Hyperion employee.


	2. Four Stars Out of Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another posting on the same day??  
> FWI; since I realized that it might be confusing, Rhys has his cybernetic arm but not his ECHOeye (yet)

\--5 Hours Later--

Rhys awoke to beeping. 

For a second, he thought it was his alarm clock. By habit, he reached out a sluggish hand to hit snooze, but his arm didn’t move. He blinked open his eyes to see why and was met with a blinding vision of white. He immediately closed his eyes against the glaring color and hissed as it burned his retinas. He tried to lift his hand again, this time to hit the light switch, but he was met with resistance. 

He weakly opened one eye and looked down the left side of his body. His eye slowly adjusted to the light and he was able to make out the white and blue gown on his body, leading into the pale skin on his arm and to his wrist where a metal cuff was locking it to the railing around the bed. He pulled at it, but it didn’t move more than an inch before going taught. 

“You tryin’ to go somewhere, kiddo?” someone asked from his right. 

Rhys rolled his head to the other side, realizing he didn’t have the energy to lift it, but was distracted by the fact that his cybernetic arm was gone. He glanced at the empty space on the bed not quite comprehending that he was missing a limb. 

“I had it taken away, since I’m not sure I can trust you with it. It’s really the only thing about you that could potentially cause damage since the rest of you is, well, it’s just sad and wiry,” the same voice answered. And Rhys realized he had spoken the question aloud. 

Taken it? Why would they take it? 

Rhys furrowed his eyebrows almost comically at his right side, his face looser in its expressions than normal and he distantly realized he was probably on some kind of medication. He finally moved his head to find the where the voice was coming from.

Okay, he was definitely on drugs, because he was seeing Handsome Jack leaning against the wall of his room casually drinking water. 

And he was laughing. “Wow, kid. They really have you doped to the gills. You’re eyes are all glassy and you’ve been staring at me for like a solid 3 minutes. I mean, people usually look at me in awe, but not for that long.” 

Rhys’s first thought was that Handsome Jack looked exactly the same as he did in all those posters he had hung up in his room all those years ago. Even the clothes were the same, the strange mix of formal and casual wear, and the mask that added uncanniness to his most recognizable feature. 

“You—you’re Handsome Jack,” Rhys attempted to say, but the words came out all jumbled and slurry. 

“Yep,” he said, popping the ‘p’. “And you’re, uh, give me a second,” he pulled out his comm unit and typed a few things into it. 

Rhys took the moment to try and figure out if this was actually Handsome Jack or just some drug induced vision. He was hedging his bets on the latter, because the former made no sense. Also, he wanted to figure out where he was and what was happening. 

“Ah, Rhys.” He paused, “Rhys? No last name, what are you a popstar? Never mind, not important; you’re 24, woah, young, and associate programmer to Henderson, that’s unfortunate. You’ve worked for me for three years, you grew up on Eden-4, and you have an arrest record, which I would have never guessed looking at you.” 

Rhys grimaced, which in the drugged state made his face contort in a dramatic and hilarious expression. “It wasn’t…wasn’t my idea. I told Jenny it’d be stupid, but, but we did it and then the—the raccoon showed up and it was…bad.” 

While Rhys was trying to form a sentence, Jack had stepped closer, throwing his comm unit on top of Rhys’s bed. It landed in between his feet and Rhys was momentarily distracted by it not understanding where it came from. It took his brain a few seconds to realize that no, it didn’t fall from the sky and that Jack had tossed it. 

“Look, kid, any other time I’d be down for listening to that story because it sounds entertaining as hell, but see, I’m not in a great mood. And do you know why?” He had set the glass of water on the side table and then placed a hand by Rhys’s head, curled into the pillow, and leaned in. 

This drew Rhys’s attention away from the comm unit and back up to the maybe-drug-vision-Jack. He shook his head.

“It’s because I’ve been shot. And no matter how many times it happens, it still hurts like a bitch. And right after I had gotten shot, in my own space station, your body dropped from the heavens like a dumb angel. So, I’m gonna need you to tell me how these things are connected, because right now, it’s not looking great for you.” 

Handsome Jack had been shot? 

Rhys glanced down Jack’s body. “Why’re you standing?”

“Because I’m made of stronger stuff than you, buttercup,” Jack answered the slurred question. This time bringing forward his other hand and gripping Rhys’s face. His expression turned from easy-going to hard in a split second. “Now, tell me what happened.” 

Whatever drugs they had given him created a type of cloud in his mind, which kept everything that he tried to grasp slip away to hide underneath the haze. It was like trying to catch fish in a lake with his bare hands; infuriating and pointless.

But there were some memories like snapshots that he could recall if he thought really hard. “Uh, I was smoking and, and there was this guy? And he was normal, but I looked at him any—ways. He had a gun, like a gun, gun,” If Rhys closed his eyes, he could almost see the scene again like a slow motion replay. “I was nervous and I was going to leave, but I stayed. I stayed, I don’t know why, I don’t—”

The grip around his chin tightened. “Focus,” Jack growled. 

The pain helped center him. “He was aiming at someone. I watched as he moved like he was following someone. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t leave, because it was a person; a real person. I jumped him, I think it made his shot go wide, but I don’t know. It hurt though, there was so much ringing and I couldn’t hold him. He hurt me, slammed my head into the ground and then, and then—” Rhys’s arm unconsciously moved to hover over the wound, but the cuffs halted the movement. “He shot me. I tried to grab the railing, but I wasn’t fast enough and then, then it all went black.” 

Rhys pried open his eyes to escape, and the image faded back into the white room and Jack’s face. Up close, the mask looked weirdly natural if not for the metal brackets and the lighter skin color, it would just look like his face. 

He wondered what it felt like. 

The lips of the mask moved as Jack sighed. “See, I want to believe you, kid, but there’s a problem. This second guy you’re talking about we don’t have him, so all I’ve got is signs of struggle on this balcony I didn’t even know existed and now your story.” 

In back of his mind, underneath the drug haze, Rhys realized that there was a threat in Jack’s words. “H—he had tattoos…” 

Jack’s hand left Rhys’s chin and settled by the empty space of where his arm should be. “Are you telling me that you could identify him?”

Rhys nodded and for some reason, felt tears welling up in his eyes. His throat felt tight and for a brief moment all he wanted was his mom. And as soon as he thought of his mother, the tears began to spill down his cheeks followed by a hiccup that he would be extremely embarrassed about if he wasn’t high as a kite. 

He didn’t even realize that Jack had backed away with same caution as someone trying not to set off a bomb. “Uh, look, kid. You don’t have to cry; I’m not going to kill you or anything, yet. If you can verify that there was a person besides you there then you’ll be free to go or whatever.” 

“I—I don’t know why I’m crying,” Rhys wailed, frustrated; smacking his fist against the soft bed. 

“Yeah, okay,” Handsome Jack glanced at the kid with trepidation. “I’m going to be back later when you’re not drugged and all like this,” he gestured towards all of Rhys who now had snot rolling out of his bandaged nose. “And you’re going to help un-incriminate yourself by looking at some security footage, Okay? Okay, great.” 

The door swung shut behind Jack and Rhys was left alone to cry himself back to sleep.

\--3 Hours later--

Rhys had woken up four more times after Jack’s visit. The first was when a nurse shook him awake to answer some questions about pain level (fucking 10), clarity (Yes, I know what my name is), and if he felt it when she touched here (yes), here (yes), here (ouch! Yeah). 

The second was when he awoke on his own from a nightmare where a man wearing Handsome Jack’s face shot him and then threw him from the top of building. He shot awake just as his body hit the unforgiving ground, the pain still echoing through his limbs. He still didn’t have his other arm, but the cuffs had at some point been removed, probably because even though he was a suspect, he wasn’t able to physically go anywhere in his state. 

The third time he woke up was to an actual doctor who listed off his injuries to him in the most bored tone he had ever heard:  
1\. Two broken ribs  
2\. A broken nose  
3\. A fractured shoulder blade  
4\. A gunshot wound

And a concussion to top it all off. The gunshot wound was apparently the worst, having torn through his stomach and missed his spine by millimeters. He was told in the same even tone that he was lucky to have his ability to walk and Rhys, for no reason, wanted to punch the man in the face. He was worried that he would get the handcuffs put back on if he did that though, so he just sneered at the man until he checked his vitals and then left.

The drugs were really affecting his mood swings even though the dosage had been lowered considerably. He was now able to form proper sentences and think in sequential order, but unfortunately that meant he could now feel the pain he should have been feeling earlier. 

That wasn’t fun. 

His body felt like one large bruise. He had attempted at some point to walk over to the bathroom, which turned into a humiliating crawl and then a call to the nurse who then had to pick him up and help him go pee. 

Rhys had never thought there would be a moment in life where he wouldn’t want a woman close to his dick, but lo and behold he had found one. 

He knows that if they find the guy that apparently tried to shoot Jack (which meant Rhys had saved his LIFE, HOLY SHIT!) he was likely going to want to kill the man himself, but goddamn did Rhys want a chance at him. He had never wanted to kill someone before, but the amount of times he imagined strangling the guy had ramped up considerably after the bathroom incident. 

The fourth time Rhys woke up was for no reason. 

One second he was asleep and the next his eyes were blinking open. The hospital room was set to mimic the same day and night cycles on Helios, so all of the lights had been turned off, leaving his room pitch black and completely silent to encourage sleep. 

It was instantly suspicious. 

Given what Rhys had just experienced, he was on a new level of high alert and being woken up by nothing except silence was sending alarm bells ringing in his head. He threw off the blanket and moved to get up when a hand clamped down on his mouth and shoved him back into the pillows. 

Even that small movement caused Rhys to cry out, but the hand did a good job of muffling most of the sound. He tried to struggle out, but very quickly the person’s whole body weight was added over his own, giving him no chance to escape. 

“You shouldn’t have gotten in the way,” the voice, female, hissed. Her voice was altered by a modulator, but the feminine tones still played through the robotic auto-tune. 

Rhys could feel panic seizing his limbs and began to thrash. She was strong, sitting down his legs and holding down his one arm with her own. Her other hand was still over his mouth, but it moved down to his throat and squeezed.

His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark, which gave the experience a nightmarish quality where he was being strangled by some unseen monster. He tried to turn his body sideways, freeing the only arm he had, but his injuries stopped him with a sharp pain that if he had breath, it would have been knocked out of him.

He gasped around the hold and the woman only tightened once she heard.

Her breath ghosted over his face as she leaned in, and then he could finally see her face. Half of it was covered by the voice modulator, but her eyes were blue and held nothing but determination. “The children of the vault will triumph,” she hissed into his ear.

Rhys squeezed his eyes shut and only thought that he didn’t want to die. There wasn’t any particular reason; there was no loved one keeping him going; there was no goal that he desperately needed to accomplish, he just wanted to keep living more than anything. The last bit of oxygen left his lungs and the primal terror that rolled through his body forced him to open his eyes. His hind brain telling him to fight, find something, anything and fight back. 

And out of the corner of his eye, Jack’s empty water glass glittered. 

The woman was still close from whispering at him and Rhys decided to take a page out her partner’s book, reeling his head back and then snapping it as hard as he could against her own. It hurt like a bitch and he felt a fresh wave of blood roll down out of his nose, but something had definitely crunched in her face. 

She was pushed backwards, her grip on his arm loosened. Rhys pulled it free, twisting underneath her to reach the glass and without hesitation, brought it crashing into the side of her face. She tumbled out of the bed and Rhys threw himself off the opposite side, ignoring the cacophony of new hurt that spread at the reckless movement. 

He used the edge of the bed to push up to his feet and scrambled towards the door.

\--3 Hours Earlier--

Despite Jack’s reputation and the reputation of his company, no one has ever tried to assassinate him. Sure, he’s gone planet side and has had bandits, vault hunters, and beasts try and kill him, but he knew the danger before stepping foot on Pandora. It was fucking Pandora if something wasn’t trying to kill you then you were doing it wrong. There was something thrilling about dropping down onto that surface and knowing he would have to fight tooth and nail to make it back to Helios alive. 

But that was point wasn’t it? 

That the goal was to make it back to Helios; the place counter to Pandora. 

Maybe that was why, even though it was just a single shot, easily stitched back up, that Jack felt so shaken. For the first time since finishing the final structure that would be Hyperion’s greatest space station, Jack had found himself looking over his shoulder. 

As he left the kid—Rhys—crying hysterically in a drug stupor, he couldn’t help but throw a quick backwards glance as he walked down the surgery ward. He let out a frustrated growl because of it, making the nurses and doctors he passed shrink and duck their heads. The man didn’t notice, too lost in his own self-berating to care about the worker bees scurrying out his way (which is something he would normally enjoy watching). 

He threw open the doors, exiting the hospital. Much to the surprise of anyone standing a few feet outside of it as they watched Handsome Jack stomp out through the swinging doors only to sharply turn and rip open a locked control panel in the wall.

A man who was leaning against it, taking a quick lunch break, dropped his sandwich in a haste to escape the war path. 

The control panel opened when it registered Jack’s handprint and immediately displayed a holographic interface. Jack punched a few codes into it, manically running through screen after screen until he got to the speaker system controls. 

Access PA system. y/n?

Jack practically punched the ‘yes’ option and leaned in close to the small speaker located at the bottom of the panel. “Hey, kiddos; it’s Handsome Jack again. I’m sure you’ve all heard, but there was an attempt on my handsome life today. Obviously, it wasn’t successful because the asshole is incompetent and underestimated how fucking awesome I am.” 

“Fun fact: the assassin is still on the loose. So, this message is more for him:” Jack’s voice shifted from barely controlled anger to a deadly calm. “The only thing more stupid than trying to kill me, is trying to kill me and then failing. As of five hours ago, all shuttles leaving or entering Helios have been halted; there is no way off of his station and I will scourge every office, every closet, every corner of this place until YOU ARE FOUND AND THEN I WILL GUT YOU LIKE THE GODDAMN SKAG YOU ARE!” 

Jack took a step back and counted to ten, before leaning back in with a manic grin. “Just to make it easier for you, I’m going tell you that I will be heading to the security department in about, oh let’s say 10 minutes. I welcome you to try and kill me again.” He paused and then added, “I expect my assistant to me meet there in five minutes with a new comm unit. I’ve seemed to have misplaced mine.” 

Jack spun on his back heel and walked away. He took a few steps and paused, noticing the crowd of onlookers who had gathered and froze watching his little announcement. Jack grabbed the closet person, a man who was gaping at him, by the shirt and pushed him towards the control panel.

“Fix it,” he commanded and then jauntily walked away. 

He made it to the security department located on the 14E floor in 11 minutes. As soon as he stepped off the elevator he was met with a red-faced assistant who still inexplicably had a stack of papers one arm and was holding out a comm unit with the other. Jack snatched it without making skin to skin contact and took long strides towards the end of the hallway. 

“S—sir, should you be on your feet? I mean, you’ve been shot not, uh, 5 hours ago?” His assistant stuttered.

Jack ignored him. “I’m going to need you to go back to my office and call Timothy. Tell him to use the artifact and then come find me,” he ordered, dismissing the man by opening a door labeled Security Feed and then closing it in his assistant’s face. 

“Handsome Jack, sir,” a slim woman greeted as soon as he walked in. She was dressed like all security officers: black long sleeve shirt, black pants, and boots with a SMG hanging from her shoulder unlike most, she was standing at attention. 

Militarily trained, then. 

“At ease, geez,” he said, waving his hand to dispel the formality of her stance. She instantly eased her shoulders, dropped her arm to her side and waited for further instructions.

Jack decided to like her. “Show me the footage from the balcony, again.”

Now that Jack had the kid’s story, he at least had a general idea that could either be disproved or proven through the cameras. Before, he was just looking for anything that might give him a clue to who would dare shoot at him, but now he could potentially narrow down the parameters. 

The security officer wheeled her chair back out and sat down. She tapped a few keys into the holographic keyboard, the large flat table in front of her came to life in the same blue-tint of all holograms. She flicked between the cameras on the west side of the space station, labeled in the corner of the screen as C1W-a, C2W-b, etc. 

“I’m sorry, but the footage is still pretty weak. There aren’t any cameras on the balcony on floor 12W so we had to use footage from C10-d, C10-e, and C12W-c, but none of them look directly at the place where the shooter was stationed,” she said as she pulled up the three cameras, moving the images to sit side by side for Jack to choose from. 

“Show me The Bridge cameras first,” he answered, moving closer and folding his arms in concentration. “Five minutes before I enter.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The third camera footage was minimized to the far corner and cameras C10-d and C10-e were expanded to take up the space. She rewound the footage until it reached the time he asked for and then hit play. C10-d was angled so that it overlooked the entire walkway of the bridge and showed people walking and carrying on with the normal days. C10-e was on the opposite end of C10-d and was angled slightly upwards so that part of its frame was filled with the west pillar of the H and the top panes of the bridge. 

He watched until he saw himself enter the frame of C10-d followed by his assistant slightly behind. He saw as he turned back to scold to him and then the moment that the bullet hit, forcing him to stumble two steps forward in the impact. 

He continued to let the footage roll until the body fell into frame. The top of the bridge was barely visible on this camera only in very top of the frame, but it landed a solid minute after he was shot. 

“He falls a minute and 12 seconds after the shot,” the woman voices his own thoughts, and without prompting continues. “He also lands on his back, which is telling since most people don’t jump backwards.”

“He could’ve turned as he fell,” Jack suggested, playing devil’s advocate.

“Not likely, it’s hard to turn with the gravity that surrounds this station. You’re kind of stuck in the position you fall in, which is why so many people use it as a damn elevator. He would’ve gone off the balcony back first.”

“Which means he was pushed,” Jack surmised. They had already guessed that before; security had a report presented to him as he was being stitched up hours ago. But now that he had heard Rhys’s version, it made more sense. “So, the kid struggles with the shooter for a minute and is then pushed off the balcony to then land on the bridge twelve seconds after.” 

The officer switched to the minimized camera feed. “Employee-2264, Rhys, enters the balcony at 11:09, leaves at 11:25,” she narrated as C12W-b plays Rhys entering through a door labeled Emergency Exit and then fast forwards to when he leaves, heading back towards the elevator. The camera angle only shows the hallway, so only employees leaving and entering the balcony or leaving and entering the main elevator appear. 

“But then the footage goes static once he leaves the frame cutting out at 11:25,” she said, frustrated as Rhys’s back exits the frame, the elevator doors open and then there’s only static. “Sometime between 11:25 and 11:31 Rhys comes back, finds the shooter, struggles with him, and is thrown from the roof.” 

“Why does he come back?” Jack asked himself. That was part that had him keeping some suspicion of the kid; the gap in his story that didn’t quite match up with the footage. Also, there is no actual proof of a second person being up there with him. 

Jack turned away from the cameras and grabbed the edge of the officer’s chair to spin it to face him. “If you were going to assassinate me, how would you do it?” 

Most of his employees would sputter out a hasty disclaimer that they would never even think about hurting him, blah, blah, blah. But this woman furrowed her brows in concentration and fired back a few questions of her own. “Am I still using a sniper rifle? Do I know your schedule beforehand? How long have I been following you? Am I alone or do I have a partner?” 

Jack smirked. “Okay, I’ll play: Yes, yes, 1 week, and solo.” 

She tapped her finger against the arm rest as she thought. “Well, if I know your patterns then I definitely wouldn’t choose when you’re walking across the bridge to shoot.”

“Why?” Jack pushed. “I’m pretty exposed there.”

“But there’s too many civilians; it’d be too difficult to calculate the shot with so many moving obstacles that could potentially get in the way.” 

That’s exactly what Jack thought; out of all the places to choose to assassinate him, such a public setting didn’t make sense from a sniper’s perspective. “Where would get me?”

“If I’m stuck with the sniping option, I’d shoot you in the 15E elevator as you rode it up to your penthouse. It has to go up 5 floors, you’re the only one on it because no one but you goes up there, and it’d be tough but not impossible to calculate the shot with a moving target through the glass.” 

“You are terrifying,” Jack clapped in glee. “Remind me to promote you later. But back to my hypothetical assassination, yes, that’s exactly what someone smart would do. Let’s assume the shooter is smart and had that planned what would cause them to deviate?” 

“A change in schedule?” She guessed.

“Such as a trip to Pandora where I’m no longer on Helios for a week and they get antsy?” 

“But they had enough forethought to damage the camera footage, so they had to have known where they were going to snipe you from,” she countered, metaphorically switching argumentative positions with Jack to become devil’s advocate. 

“Not if the device is something I have on me,” he fired back. And then the meaning of the sentence sunk in. “Which means the idiot could’ve been walking around Helios disabling cameras if he didn’t want his face seen.”

He grabbed the edge of the officer’s chair again and spun it to face the security terminal. “Go through the past 2 weeks and search for any cameras that go static. We’ll retrace the bastard’s steps and hopefully, have some sort of timeline to build from it.” 

He gave her a clap on the shoulder before leaving the room with an extra bounce in his step. 

\--3 Hours and 5 minutes later--

The security guard posted outside of the hospital room 23 in the surgery ward was given quite the shock when the patient came surging out of the room after letting out a full bodied scream. Instinctively, he reached out to catch the man to keep him from smacking his face on the ground. The man weakly twisted in his hold until he lifted him up and deposited into an empty wheelchair across the hall. 

He was yelling about a woman and attacking him, pointing frantically at his room. His face was mess of blood and purple, fanning out from his nose and dripping down his lips. His neck was red and his voice was hoarse and cracking. 

The security, Jorge, unholstered his weapon and entered the room. He flicked on the lights to see a woman dressed in normal work attire, struggling to get up off the ground. Her hand was bloody and slipping where it was trying to get a grip on the table in front of her. She turned at the noise of his footsteps; the bottom half of her face was covered by some type of mask, but it was the exposed parts that caused him to pause.

There were shards of glass embedded into her skin. The largest piece was stuck through the middle of her left eye, making a river a red run down her cheek like blood. 

She lunged at him and he put a bullet through her kneecap, making sure not to kill but stop. She dropped with a mechanical whine and Jorge handcuffed her just as more security and medical staff rushed onto the scene. 

Rhys watched in semi-consciousness as teams of people showed up, running into his hospital room. Some of them were dressed in the formal gear of a guard, but some were dressed in scrubs. They all ignored him, probably assuming he was just another patient. The security guard came out first followed by the woman that attacked him, strapped to a bed bleeding from her face and leg. There was an entire medical team fluttering around her injuries. She was trying in vain to struggle free as both of her arms were handcuffed together laying on top of her body. 

A nurse jabbed her with a needle and she stopped moving all together as they wheeled pass him. 

A shadow blocked his vision, forcing Rhys to look up and meet the gaze of his doctor. He was already looking over his patient, checking for any new injuries and calling over staff to lift him back into a bed. “Where are you hurting?”

Everywhere, Rhys wanted to say but his voice made a sound close to croak and then dropped the rest of the syllables. The doctor nodded and began to prod around the angry red marks forming on his throat. “You’ve been strangled.”

Yeah, no shit, Rhys glared.

He began ordering dosages of medications that Rhys didn’t know and he was drifting off seconds after one of the needles was pushed into his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the second chapter!  
> And I realized that I didn't say this, but the first chapter's title is from a song called Lethal Combination by The Wombats. This chapter's title is taken from an Arctic Monkey's song.


	3. A Rock and a Hard Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All you guys that have left kudos and commented are the BEST! And I love you!! Here is the next chapter for you guys and yes, it did take another 3,000 words for Rhys and Jack to meet, but it has happened. Haha, writing is hard!  
> Hope you guys enjoy!

Rhys experienced a strong feeling of déjà vu as he awoke to the glaring white of another hospital room. 

The full weight of his previous injuries plus a few new ones were readily present and along with the fact that he was able to hear himself think, he figured that he wasn’t given the good drugs this time. 

He groaned and threw his only arm over his torso. There were other places that hurt: his shoulder, his neck, his whole face, but the gunshot was the worst by far. It felt like there was an animal clawing at his skin from the inside of his stomach—they must have redone his stitches. 

He laid like that for a while. Just breathing and trying not to vomit. 

This is how the doctor found him. “Ah, good you’re awake.”

“You knocked me out,” Rhys retorted; his voice sounded like he had been gargling sandpaper in his free time, but at least it was working this time. 

The doctor looked at him in confusion. “No, we didn’t. We inserted your IV and then you passed out. We wouldn’t put someone with a concussion under unless it was strictly necessary.” 

“Oh,” he mumbled as the doctor pulled out his chart. 

Without anything else to do, Rhys leaned back against his pillows. What he wanted to do, more than anything was leave. He figured that if he was going to be in agony, he might as well do it from the comfort of his own couch. It wasn’t like they could protect him here anyways; if anything, he got more injured in the hospital. 

Rhys glanced over at the doctor who had moved on from the chart and was now standing next to Rhys checking the vitals flashing across the screen. “Can I get my arm back?”

The doctor jumped like he forgotten Rhys was even there. “Uh, I don’t think so Mr. Rhys,” he looked uncomfortable. “Handsome Jack ordered us to take it from you, so we can’t just give it back until he tells us otherwise.”

Rhys motioned vaguely to his person with his one arm. “Look, I’m clearly not in any state to like overthrow Helios right now and I’ve just been attacked. I want my fucking arm back. So, you call whoever you need to get that done.” 

“Mr. Rhys—”

Okay, so maybe the drugs were still in his system, because the mood swings were back and the pendulum was swinging straight into irrational anger. “No! No, Mr. Rhys! I want my damn arm; this is practically illegal—it’s my limb, I paid for it and you’ve stolen it! So, you get me my arm or I fucking walk out of here and then you can explain that to Handsome Jack!” He was already throwing off the covers by the end of his rant. 

The doctor held out placating hands, conflicted between stopping his patient from hurting himself and wanting to push the kid back into the bed so Jack wouldn’t kill him. “Please, Mr. Rhys, you are hurt and you need medical treatment. Your GS had to be restitched and you still have a concussion—”

Rhys pushed the man’s hands away and wobbled onto his feet. “No, I’m going home. I got strangled here and you are an arm thief and I won’t spend another minute here,” and in a scarily accurate impersonation of his mother, he huffed and held out a hand to stop the doctor from talking.

He pushed open the door and hobbled down the hallway in his hospital gown. No one paid him mind, too busy doing their jobs to care about a lone patient. He made it half-way down the hallway before exhaustion hit him hard. He was wheezing after a few yards and had to lean up against a cream wall to catch his breath. 

“Mr. Rhys you need to get back into bed; you’re not just a patient but you’re still a suspect and I can’t have you leaving this hospital,” the doctor demanded as he got up.  
Rhys ignored him, searching for something to help him walk. His eyes landed on a lone wheelchair it was impossible to determine, but he felt like it was the same one he was in earlier. He pushed himself off the wall and made a bee-line to it, dropping into the blue plastic seat, which sunk dangerously low underneath him. 

The doctor leapt in front of him just as he got his hand around the wheel. “You can’t leave, Mr. Rhys. Get out of the wheelchair.”

Rhys summoned all of his memories of being a petulant middle schooler and said, “Make me,” while already wheeling himself forward. He angled directly towards the doctor not because he wanted to, but because it turned out trying to wheel one handed was tough, causing him to list to the left. 

The doctor stepped out of the way on instinct to avoid having his toes run over. Rhys went right passed him, used his leg to push off the wall, correcting his direction, and then headed down the hallway in a strange zig-zag pattern. Nurses and orderlies thankfully moved out of his way, so he had a pretty clear path to the main double door exit. 

He shoved one of the doors open with his foot, pushing the wheelchair quickly forward so as to catch the door from closing. He was momentarily caught in between it and the door jam, before he summoned enough strength to overpower friction and the weight of the door to burst free. 

It was like taking a breath of fresh air.

The sanitation smell immediately abated and he was left with the artificial air of Helios. There were crowds of people out, moving like waves pass him; swelling with noise. Rhys couldn’t stop though, he didn’t want to risk the doctor actually growing a spine and coming after him with actual security, so he gripped a wheel with his hand and continued forward.

He was a strange sight to see: a man with a broken nose in a hospital gown with one arm in a wheelchair rolling himself down a hallway through a combination of spinning a singular wheel and scooting with his feet. 

Rhys passed by a man leaned up against a control panel, crying into his jacket and took comfort that at least he wasn’t the only one having a bad day.

The hospital was thankfully on the west side so all he had to do was get to an elevator and then it would be a simple ride down to his apartment. With a goal in mind and in reach, Rhys continued to roll down the halls of Helios in search of an elevator. 

In true Hyperion fashion, not a single person offered to help him. 

But he eventually made it to an elevator on his own and wheeled into the cramped space, only a little bit sorer and a lot sweatier than when he left the hospital.

“Second floor,” he croaked out.

The man in a business suit hit the button, giving Rhys a quick double take.

Rhys glared at him until he turned back to his comm unit, probably typing to co-workers about the crazy, sweaty, crippled kid in a wheelchair. Whatever, at least his life was more interesting than Mr. Business-I-own-a-nice-watch. 

All of the other occupants had exited on earlier floors, leaving Rhys alone once the elevator dinged on the second floor. Rhys had been prepared to wheel as soon as the doors opened, but didn’t account for the lip that was easy to get over entering, but not so easy to get over exiting. He hit it and jerked backwards, not having enough strength to conquer it. 

“Fuck,” he breathed out, trying again and failing. 

He would have to abandon the wheelchair and walk. 

Rhys grumbled and stuck out a foot to keep the elevator doors from automatically closing. He then placed his hand on the arm rest, leaned his weight into it, and pushed up. The goal was to minimize bending his torso as much as possible, but a sharp pain still tugged at his navel and all he accomplished was getting out of the wheelchair in a worm like fashion. 

He let it roll backwards into the elevator and hobbled forward on his two legs. It would be a strange sight for the next person who entered, but hey, maybe they would think it was a miracle. 

Rhys’s apartment was only a few yards down from where he was. There were two sets of elevators; one dropping people off near the laundromat and a second dropping them off near the mail station. Rhys had ridden the latter, which was in spitting distance to his place. 

He used the wall as a balance and crutch to cover the last bit of ground, only stopped by one of his neighbors, Greg, coming out from his apartment. “Heyyyyy, Rhys, you okay?” He had begun the sentence just as he faced Rhys and had drawn out the word as long as it took to comprehend what he was seeing. 

Rhys threw up a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Peachy,” and moved around the man. 

He tried to be mostly polite to the people living on his floor since they were stuck being around each other almost indefinitely: it’s not like you could move around on a full space station without dropping some serious cash. But Rhys had reached his limit of social interaction on this day and reasoned that he would send Greg some cupcakes later to make up for it. 

“Okay, bye,” Greg called after him, chocking on the last word. 

Rhys thought that was kind of strange; he had been rude, but that didn’t really led to someone chocking on their own spit in surprise (not when you worked around corporate assholes all day long). And it was only when Rhys had placed his hand over the scanner to unlock his front door did he realize that the hospital gown was open in the back, leaving his ass hanging out for all to see. 

\--

Handsome Jack was looking at the woman in the hospital with disdain. It was shown through the tightness of his jaw, the narrowed angle of his eyes, and the pursed lips. His hand was tapping an uneven beat on the railing around the bed with a clinging just loud enough to be faintly heard outside the room. His posture was stiff, which added to the aura of ‘pissed as hell’ but was actually from the continuous sting in his shoulder, having waved off the meds when the doctor offered them. 

There were two other people in the room: a security guard and a doctor. 

The security guard was stationed on the right side of the bed and was very uncomfortable. He had never met Handsome Jack in person, like most Hyperion employees, and his reputation certainly preceded him. For all accounts, the guard had done his job and done it well, but while Handsome Jack was staring him down he couldn’t help but feel that he had fucked up in the most spectacular of fashion. But maybe that was just his personality; making everyone seem small and useless in comparison. 

The security guard shifted to his other foot, glancing across the bed to the doctor and figured he was at least in a better position than that guy. 

“You,” Jack spoke and his voice broke through the silence but somehow ramped up the tension even more. He was pointing the guard who jumped at the sound. “Tell me again what happened, slowly and in detail.” 

He did not know what to do with his hands, awkwardly placing them at his sides as he turned towards the masked man. “I—I was guarding the room, sir like you asked; room [number] when the patient ran out. He was hurt, well, obviously he was in a hospital, but like more hurt, I think. There was blood. And he wasn’t making a lot of sense, but I figured someone probably attacked him. So, I went into the room and that chick, uh, lady was there,” he gestured stiffly towards the unconscious woman. “And she had attacked me, so I shot her but I made sure to aim for the knee so that she wouldn’t die, because that’s what we were taught—”

“Yeah, yeah; gold star for you, buttercup,” Jack interrupted the guard with a sarcastic single clap. “Did she say anything before these idiots knocked her out?” He gestured towards the doctor as a representative for all the idiots. 

“N—no, sir.” 

“Great, so instead of, I don’t know, figuring out the conspiracy that exists on this space station to actively murder me, we now have to wait until sleeping beauty decides to wake up, giving these assholes more opportunities to take a stab at me, literally,” Jack summarized in a tone just an edge away from a growl while he began to pace. “Do correct me if I’m wrong,” he offered to the room. 

The doctor took a hesitant step forward and the guard shook his head, trying to stop him from doing something incredibly stupid. “Well, Handsome Jack, sir, she’s probably not part of the, uh, conspiracy. She went after Mr. Rhys and, uh…”

The man trailed off as Jack stalked over and pulled him forward by the lapel of his white coat. “I’m sorry, what was that? Because it sounded like you were disagreeing with me, which would be ridiculous and unbelievably stupid,” he said in a dangerously calm tone. 

The doctor, realizing his mistake, frantically shook his head. “No, no, I wasn’t, sir. It’s just that she might not be, be—”

“There you go again,” Jack said, patting the man’s face just a little lighter than a slap. “Let me spell it out to you since you seem to be having a hard time keeping up,” he let go of the lapel, grabbing the back of the coat instead and then used the grip to shove the man into the bed. The doctor threw out his hands to stop him face planting into the sheets.  
“This person here, woman if we we’re being generous, tried to kill one of your patients, a kid by the name of Rhys, remember him? Yeah, the guy you let leave, but we’ll circle back around to that point,” Jack pushed on the man’s harder, just to watch the doctor’s arms shake. “Anyways, Mr. Rhys, had information about the person who tried to kill me, but then someone else comes along, this chick, and tries to kill him. So, let’s put two and two together and you can see why I might see these events as related, right?”

The doctor nodded. 

“I can’t hear you,” Jack taunted. 

“Yes, yes. I’m sorry, sir.”

Jack tugged the man back up and threw him to the ground. The doctor landed on his forearms, but was quickly shoved off balance by Jack’s boot in his side. He gasped, rolled over and made eye-contact with Jack who had at some point taken out a pistol. The doctor held up a hand in a useless attempt to stop the impending bullet, while trying to crawl backwards and escape the situation. 

“P—please, I won’t; you’re right and I shouldn’t have questioned—” he begged with terror in his eyes. 

Jack clicked off the safety and aimed the gun at the man’s head. “Oh, this isn’t about that. And I feel that it’s important that you know that; this is about letting your patient and the ONLY KEY FUCKING WITNESS leave your hospital!” 

The hammer cocked back, the doctor started to cry.

And then the door opened as his assistant meandered in. He paused a few steps into the room, the door slowly sliding closed with a sad creaking sound. 

“Assistant! Just in time to see the show,” Jack cheered, firing the gun and shattering the doctor’s skull. Bits of brain and bone dispersed around the room, painting the nearest wall red in an upwards spray, and sticking to his assistant’s jacket. 

Jack tucked his pistol away and stepped over the body to reach his assistant who was frozen in the middle of the room. The security guard vomited into a waste basket.  
“Y—your, uh, Tim is here,” the assistant stuttered out. 

“Awesome,” Jack said with a smile. “Now, I need you to go and fetch someone for me. See, the late doctor here let go of a patient named Rhys and I need you to find him and bring him to, um, bring him to my office. Yeah, that’ll work,” he physically spun the smaller man around with a hand on his shoulder and shoved him towards the door when he didn’t move right away. 

“Chop, chop, peon!” 

\--

The first thing Rhys saw once he walked through his front door was his roommate and best friend, Vaughn. He was in the kitchen, dancing horrifically to some bass heavy song playing on the radio while flipping a pancake in a pan. He was also only in his underwear—it made the whole hip-thrusting movement way more visceral in the most uncomfortable of ways. The dance routine apparently included a full spin, which landed Vaughn facing the door, holding a pan and lowering himself from his tip-toes when he spotted Rhys. 

“Hey, buddy,” Rhys greeted with a tired wave. 

Vaughn screeched in an octave Rhys did not know the man was capable of reaching, and dropped the pan. It hit the ground with a clang and bounced, landing face down by Vaughn’s left foot. 

Rhys did not have the time nor energy to unpack that reaction to his presence, so he simply replied, “Yeah, it’s good to see you too, bro,” while trying to avoid staring at the man’s extremely well-defined abs. 

“Yo—you,” He sputtered nonsense, pointing an accusatory finger at his friend. It took him a good minute to finally find his words, and when he did, he shouted, “You’re supposed to be dead!”

Rhys looked down at himself. “Uh, no?” 

He experimentally touched his stomach and yep, there was still pain so he was very much alive. And then the reality of the situation sunk in and his head snapped back up and he pointed his own accusatory finger back at Vaughn. “Wait, why’re you so happy?! You should be mourning me!”

Vaughn’s face, while still pale, shifted into a guilty expression. “Well, I mean, I was, dude. Like super sad, but its Friday, you know. I did take the rest of the day off of work though, for the whole grieving thing.” 

“What does it being Friday have anything to do with this?!” Rhys questioned, his hoarse voice screeching unpleasantly in the higher registers. “And I’m super glad that you used my death to get out of work early!”

“Hey!” Vaughn said indignantly, “Everyone grieves differently. I had a good cry about it, but then I thought that my best bro would want me to move on. Give me a break; I’ve had a whole day to come to terms with it!”

Rhys glared at his friend in extreme disappointment. “It’s been like 8 hours, let’s not exaggerate. And I would’ve been sad for a week at least if it was you, bro.” 

Vaughn snorted, picking the pan off of the ground. “That’s total bullshit. You’d be overjoyed because then you’d finally get the bigger room,” he said, attempting to scrape the half cooked pancake off of the imitation tiled floor with a spatula. 

Rhys grumbled, knowing it was fairly accurate and disputing it would be a blatant lie. He shuffled into the kitchen, slowly lowering himself onto one of the bar stools. He decided to give Vaughn an out for this since he wasn’t actually dead as long as “Hey, you should at least make me a pancake as an apology or celebration, which ever one guilts me into dinnertime breakfast.” 

Vaughn tossed the dirty spatula into the sink and walked over to the cupboards to grab another box of pancake mix. “Yeah, yeah I’ll make you some and not because I feel guilty, but because you look like absolute shit. I mean, yikes, what happened?”

“If I look anything like how I feel then it must be horrendous,” Rhys muttered and then sighed. “Where to start: do I begin with how I got shot or how I was strangled because I tried to do the whole hero thing and stop some dude from murdering Handsome Jack?”

“Dude, working here sucks,” Vaughn said in complete sympathy. “But congrats on saving the head honcho’s life that’s gotta get you something, right?” 

Rhys shrugged, “I think I’m still a suspect, so I don’t think I’m going to get anything expect a quick boot out into space.” 

“I’ll mourn you for a whole two days if that happens, bro.”

“Thanks, bro.” 

Rhys dropped his head onto his folded arm, shifting in the stool to get more comfortable. Again, he remembered that he wasn’t currently wearing pants and that his bare ass was touching the cushion beneath: that’s got to be breaking some general roommate rules. He glanced nervously at Vaughn who had had his back to him, mixing batter, and Rhys decided what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. 

“What is this station?” Rhys asked as the next song began with even more dubstep than the previous. 

“Beats 20.3, why?”

“It’s terrible,” Rhys complained. 

Vaughn rolled his eyes, pouring batter into a newly cleaned pan. “Then you can change the station, but you have no room to talk, butt-rock.” 

“Staind is not butt-rock!” The programmer protested, and Vaughn turned around just enough to send him a look that said ‘really?’ with a raised eyebrow and an unamused expression. “It’s not! And I don’t listen to only butt-rock; I have an eclectic taste in music.” 

Vaughn finished the pancakes and slid a plate with a stack over to Rhys while rolling his eyes. “No you don’t, but I’ll let it go because I don’t want to have the ‘boy bands are real music’ conversation again.” 

Rhys accepted the plate and poured a healthy amount of syrup on top. “That’s because they are,” he whispered to himself and then to stop the inevitable argument, shoved half a pancake into his mouth. Vaughn was too busy filling up his own plate to hear Rhys’s comment, humming to himself as he set two strawberries on top of his own stack. 

After decorating his plate, he circled around the kitchen to join Rhys at the bar. He walked around behind the sitting man, planning to sit in the chair next to him when Vaughn paused mid-stride. 

“Dude!”

Rhys’s mouth was filled with fluffy goodness, so he muttered out a sound that was supposed to be a ‘what’ without looking up from his plate. Vaughn punched him in the shoulder, the injured one, causing Rhys to yelp and turn. 

“What the hell, bro?!” he yelled, after swallowing. 

“You’re not wearing pants!” Vaughn complained; plate in one hand and the other gesturing to Rhys’ naked backside. 

Rhys was still hung up on the physical violence that he completely ignored Vaughn’s legitimate complaint. “You just punched an invalid!” 

“I don’t care! There’s no special treatment in this household: no balls on the furniture!” Vaughn said. “Get up!”

Rhys shoved another half pancake into his mouth before replying, “No.” 

Vaughn wanted to cross his arms to show his annoyance, but the plate in his hand was hindering him from his ‘let me speak to your manager’ white woman gestures, so he leaned forward to toss the plate onto the counter and while he was close, smacked the fork out of Rhys’ hand. He resumed his original stance, even adding the additional foot tap to emphasize the point. 

Rhys made an incredulous noise in the back of his throat. “I can’t believe you would treat someone who just came back from the dead like this?!”

“You didn’t die; you were just shot and strangled. Now, get up and put on pants,” Vaughn demanded. 

Rhys, in all honesty, did want to put on pants. It was starting to get really cold and the cushion had turned rougher the longer he sat on it. He was pretty sure he had a rash forming from it, but once Vaughn compromised his ability to eat carbs, it became personal. So, he spun the chair around and made a show of wiggling his butt in it. “What’re you going to do about it, bro?” 

“We live sanitary lives in this household, Rhys!” Vaughn whined. 

Rhys wiggled harder. 

Vaughn opened his mouth to scold his roommate again, but paused. A look of determination just on this edge of devious crossed his features; the look was one Rhys had seen whenever the guy secretly transferred extra funds into his own account without getting caught from his supervisor’s account. And Rhys didn’t have enough time to react before Vaughn was gripping the band of his underwear and dropping them to the floor. 

The image was one that would live with Rhys the rest of his life. 

And there was a brief moment where both men stared at each other, waiting for something to happen. Rhys couldn’t help the immediate way his eyes dropped to the newly exposed skin, and Jesus, there was a lot of it. 

“Fucking Christ!” The words were punched out of him as Rhys tried to simultaneously cover his eyes and get out of the chair with only one arm, wanting to physically put distance between him and Vaughn’s dick. “Why the hell did you do that? Jesus! It’s fucking burned into my brain, holy God; why?!”

Vaughn was already yelling over Rhys’s cries. “This is what you wanted, right?! To live in anarchy! Apparently, we decided not to be civil people, so I should be able to walk around the house naked. I mean, you clearly don’t care. I’ll just go and rub my ass on every piece of furniture here!” Vaughn yelled into the universe as he walked across the living room to do exactly what he claimed. “Oh, yeah, this couch feels so nice against my—”

Rhys had his eyes squeezed shut and was waving his one arm at the whole scene he heard happening in front of him as he cowered next to the counter. “Stop, stop! Okay, alright?! Point made, I’ll put on some damn pants.” 

“Why aren’t people wearing pants?” A new voice asked. 

Both men turned towards to see Yvette standing in front of a closing front door, having let herself in seconds before. She was still in her work attire, looking at them in the same way a disappointed parent would at their own kid after eating another bottle of glue, and holding a cat. She didn’t wait for answer before bending down and letting the cat go where it bolted for the nearest piece of furniture to claw up. 

She stood back up and looked between Vaughn and Rhys like she was deciding which one to interrogate first. Vaughn was doing an amiable job of trying to cover up his junk by twisting sideways and reaching blindly for his stray underwear. Rhys had pressed his back up against the counter, covering his exposed backside; it was very cold. 

She decided to start with Rhys. “I heard you died.”

“Vaughn said the same thing,” he supplied, after clearing his throat. “Was there an announcement or something?”

“No,” she fished her comm unit out of her pocket as evidence. “Someone took a picture of you laying on top of the bridge and posted it to the Helios sub-reddit with #Rhys, #Employee-2246, and #RIP.” 

Rhys frowned. “You don’t seem too down about my crossing,” did all of his friends hate him?

Yvette snorted and walked over to him, trying to get a better look at his state. “That’s because I knew it wasn’t true; never trust anything posted to the internet. But you do look like you got pretty close, what the hell happened?” 

“Full length or TL;DR?”

The woman’s eyes jumped from his missing arm, to his face and neck, to his pit stained hospital gown before replying, “I think full length would be best.” 

\--1 Hour Later--

“Wow,” Yvette breathed out the word. 

Rhys had finished his story to silence. Once Vaughn was covered back up and Rhys had put on a pair of loose sweatpants underneath the hospital gown, they had all migrated into the living room. Rhys was leaned up against at least four pillows while Yvette had her legs stretched out across the rest of the space, sitting opposite of himself. Vaughn sat on the floor, leaned up against the coffee table completing the triangle shape they had formed. 

It had taken a lot longer to tell than Rhys thought it would. He was shocked by how much had happened in such a short amount of time—it wasn’t even Saturday yet but he felt like he had lived like five years within the past nine hours. 

“I don’t even know where to start?” Vaughn muttered in awe. 

Yvette snorted. “How about the part where Rhys met Handsome Jack and lived?” 

“I might have met him,” Rhys clarified. “There’s a strong chance it was a hallucination. I mean, I couldn’t have told you what 2 plus 2 was that’s how good the drugs were.” 

“But it makes sense,” Vaughn added. “If I was Handsome Jack, I’d want to question the potential witness. It’s not like people try to kill him on the regular. In fact, I can’t think of s single time where there was a public attempt on his life and I’ve worked here for five years.” 

“It’s got to be a competitor, right?” Yvette mused.

“That’d be nice to prove, because if it’s just my story alone then I’m definitely going to be killed either by Jack or whoever thinks I’m a loose end, whichever gets to me first,” Rhys said, realizing just how fucked he was. 

Yvette tapped his knee with her foot. “I’ll make sure to pick out a nice coffin for you. But, seriously, I’m kinda impressed, Rhys. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Had what in me?”

“A backbone,” the woman answered completely serious, trying to convey that is wasn’t meant to be an insult. 

Rhys stared back at her confused. There was a lot to unpack and he wasn’t sure he agreed with her assessment. He knew that he wasn’t the most courageous of men: you would never find him jumping into a fight first or speaking up in a crowd about some indignation—he’d most likely be a bystander in any situation. 

But, he wasn’t spineless. 

There were instances in his past where he stood up for a friend, when he pushed back first, when he took the fall instead of a loved one. There were few and far between, he’s unsure it was because of his own personality or because of his sheltered upbringing, and he mostly didn’t have a lot of obstacles to overcome in life. 

But as Rhys looked between Yvette and Vaughn, he realized that they didn’t know about those moments. Adult Rhys, Hyperion Rhys, had never had to have a backbone; surviving corporate life meant knowing how to take abuse with your head held down and not how to punch back. If there was any push back it came in the form of backstabbing, another form of cowardice. 

That really didn’t bother Rhys. What was causing him to fall silent was that he didn’t know if this change was because of Hyperion or because of himself; did the environment make him like this or was it a natural part of growing up? 

The downward sprawl of his musings was cut short by a knock at the door. 

Yvette feeing the weird atmosphere that descended upon the group and guilty for causing it, jumped up and went to answer it both as a favor and to escape the situation. She opened the door and her conversation with whoever was on the other filtered, muffled into the room. Rhys ignored it, figuring Yvette would send the person away, and watching as Vaughn attempted to bait the cat, Peaches, out from under the couch. 

“Come on, you fu—”

“Person at the door for you, Rhys,” Yvette said as she walked back over to the couch. Vaughn and her sent similar looks towards Rhys at that announcement, both assuming what it was about and knowing that most likely wasn’t going to end well for him. 

He pushed up off the couch and decided to face the inevitable, Vaughn and Yvette watching him as he crossed the floor. He was surprised to find that there wasn’t a loader bot or like a whole firing squad outside his door, but a short business man. He looked up from his comm unit when Rhys approached, his eyebrows crawling up his forehead the longer he stared. 

“Yeah, yeah I look terrible,” Rhys waved the inevitable comments away. He knew he looked like shit and was a wearing a gown with sweat pants; he didn’t need it pointed out to him. “What do you want?” 

The man shook his thinly veiled shock away before answering, “Handsome Jack has asked for you. He expects you to meet him in his office on the 15th floor right away.” 

Just the mention of his name had Rhys’s heart speeding up. He had an advantage last time they met (assuming it actually happened) that he was heavily drugged and therefore was not acting like himself nor could he recall the event. Rhys didn’t know how he was going to possibly speak with the CEO completely sober. 

“Who are you?” he asked in a fruitless endeavor to push off the inevitable. 

The guy seemed happy to answer though, preening under the attention. “I’m Handsome Jack’s personal assistant, Namayaka.” 

Rhys didn’t have anything left to ask after that. “Oh, cool,” he said just to fill the silence. 

The man checked his comm again. “We need to leave.”

“Uh, well,” Rhys glanced around for anything that might give him inspiration, trying to stall as much as possible. He caught the white of his hospital gown out of the corner of his eye. “Can I change first?” He blurted out. “I mean, I can’t meet Ja—Handsome Jack like this.” 

Namayaka looked him over and though he clearly wanted to leave as soon as possible, clearly agreed with him. “You have two minutes.” 

“Great!” The nervousness made Rhys shout the word before shutting the door in the man’s face, spinning around. He was going to head straight to his room before he noticed that the living room was empty and he only had a moment of confusion before he saw his two friends standing right to him, revealed once he closed the door. 

“I didn’t know Jack had an assistant.”

“I can’t believe you have to go meet—”

“I think that guy was shorter than—”

They said, speaking over each other while they followed Rhys across the apartment and into his bedroom. He opened his closet and pulled out a pair jeans, looked at them, and then threw them back in without hanging them back up. (Maybe he had cried a little when he put on the sweatpants earlier and the thought of going through the pain again had him saying ‘fuck it’). He would put on a shirt and shoes, anything else would be too much it wasn’t like he was doing this for Jack anyways; he just wanted to stall for time. 

He pulled off the hospital gown with a grunt as the movement pulled at his stitches and replaced it with a black, long sleeve. He then turned around and motioned for Vaughn to scoot over to make room on his bed. He moved without stopping the conversation he was having with Yvette about the horrors of being Jack’s personal assistant, and Rhys slowly lowered himself into the newly made space between the two. He took a few deep breaths before bending down and sliding on the only shoes in his closet that didn’t tie: a pair of slip on sneakers he had since college. 

He used Vaughn’s shoulder to push back onto his feet and walked over to a hanging mirror. It was small, only showing his face, but it gave him a big shock. No wonder people were looking at him so weird; he had known he looked bad but it was another thing to see it. The first thing his eyes were drawn to was his nose, which was bandaged with white strips but it was the myriad of purple and black bruising that fanned out from them, curling underneath his eyes that caused him to cringe. His cheeks were swollen from the trauma, his eyes were still glassy, and his hair was on the mess side of ‘hot mess.’ 

Not much he could do to fix any of that. So he just ran a hand through his hair, trying to at least contain the bird’s nest before hobbling back out of the room. 

“You want me to pin the sleeve?” Yvette asked, and Rhys only realized she was addressing him once he was half way into the living room. 

He stopped and glanced at the empty sleeve, hanging at his side. “Naw, it’s not like I’m going to be doing exercises or anything,” he turned and sent her a smile. “Thanks, though.”  
“Good luck, bro!” Vaughn shouted from his own bedroom, hopefully finally putting on some clothes. 

Rhys shouted a goodbye and opened the front door again. Namayaka was still there, typing away and tapping his foot impatiently when he spotted Rhys he breathed out a ‘finally’ before hurrying down the hall. 

Rhys followed the man at a much slower pace due to his own physical limitations and because he felt like being a little bit of a dick. The guy was clearly very impatient to get back to Jack and since Rhys figured he was walking to his death, he was going to take his damn time. They traveled the length of Helios in a similar fashion with Namayaka scurrying ahead and Rhys carefully stepping behind him; the latter even taking a moment to study the point on The Bridge where he had fallen from the balcony earlier that day.  
Nakayama didn’t even bother getting out of the elevator once they reached Handsome Jack’s floor, simply waving Rhys forward and waiting for him to leave so that he could presumably ride it back down to where ever he needed to go. Where he left Rhys was a type of waiting room that offered no couches, no seats of any kind, just wall to floor windows overlooking Helios and a reception desk occupied by someone who didn’t even glance his way. 

“Go in,” was all the receptionist said, flicking through a magazine. 

Rhys mumbled out a ‘thanks’ before pushing one of the double doors open, a thought about how odd that the CEO’s office didn’t come with automated doors crossing his mind, before stepping in and forgetting all thoughts that didn’t start with, “Holy shit.” 

Theoretically, Rhys knew that Handsome Jack’s office took up a whole floor. Everyone knew because no one was allowed on the 15th floor without permission, there were two loader bots stationed outside the one elevator that led to it at all times, and Jack bragged about it all the time. He had always wondered why would someone need an office that big and how did one possibly find enough stuff to put in it.

Well, question fucking answered. 

There were goddamn statues; literal statues that lined a dark blue carpet leading up to where Jack’s desk was. The walls were filled with trophy cases and bookshelves (holding actual paperback books) that then lead up into a high vaulted ceiling. The whole color scheme was done in a muted version of the Hyperion yellow and blue that strayed just on the edge of tacky; ignoring the gold statues of course, which threw the whole room over the cliff of tacky and into some nebulous realm of kitsch that had not existed before this place was built. 

Rhys walked the room in a sort of fearful awe, unable to imagine a version of himself that would have ever approved of this, but still impressed by the sheer magnitude. The carpet stopped at the point where there was a step leading up to a raised floor that held Jack’s crescent-shaped desk that was back dropped by floor to ceiling glass. 

The man himself was leaned up against the far right side of the desk scanning through a hologram that was displaying some kind of camera footage, judging by the time stamp he couldn’t make out in the corner. Rhys awkwardly stands at the bottom of the step, unsure if he is allowed to approach or if Jack even heard him come in. Should he say something? Or would Jack get mad if he interrupted him during his work?

“You gonna come up here or what, buttercup?” Jack asks, not looking away from the hologram.

Rhys scuttled up the step and approached the desk, standing a couple feet away from Jack. “Uh, sorry…sir,” he stuttered out as a creeping suspicion filtered in. Now that he was close enough to see Jack fully, he noticed that the details in his clothes were too familiar to have not seen them in person before. It was one thing to see his image on posters and on statues, but seeing someone in person will always reveal these little intricacies that aren’t captured in any other form; and Rhys was noticing them and not for the first time. 

Jack, still watching the screen, began to talk. “It’s probably not a shocker, but before you literally fell from the sky, I had never heard of you. There’s so many people that I own just on this station that I can’t find it in myself to care about each individual one; I mean, I can’t even name all those old geezers on the board. And having looked over your employment record, it’s not very surprising; you haven’t really done anything note-worthy. Just like any other worker bee, so I have to ask myself…” each word spoken had Rhys’s heart beat speeding up. Some irrational part of this brain wanted to run, but any action that Rhys could take was halted as soon as Jack turned to face in a slow movement; the blue of the hologram highlighting his features in a way that made everything seem sharper. 

“…why would a kid get involved with a situation like this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, about the cliffhanger, but it was the only place I could break it naturally unless this chapter was like really, really long. A lot of plot stuff happens next chapter (and a lot of Rhys and Jack interaction).
> 
> And no, I don't agree the music assessments of the characters. Sorry, if you are fan of Staind and yes, boy bands are real music. lol


	4. Shine Like Shark Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a little shorter, but it has more plot, and Jack and Rhys, so enjoy!

Rhys could not have formed words if he tried. The minute Handsome Jack turned to face him was the moment that every part of Rhys’s body locked up and decided that the option he was going to choose between fight or flight was freeze. He knew Jack noticed, because his movements became even more casual and eerily calm like he was purposefully juxtaposing Rhys’s frantic breathing just to show how different their positions were. 

“It doesn’t make any sense, because people, despite their myriad of flaws do have one consistency that can always be relied on,” He delivered the words low like he was divulging a secret. “They don’t change.” 

Rhys felt as if he had this conversation with Jack before; he doesn’t remember how he responded. “I—I don’t; I just, I wanted my lighter,” is the brilliant answer his brain came up with.

Jack looked slightly taken aback, something like surprise morphed the features of his mask, but it was unclear if it was good or bad. 

“What?” Jack asked, so dry that it didn’t even seem like a question but a command to explain, and explain quickly. 

Rhys felt the word vomit coming before he even opened his mouth, already cringing from what was about to come. “I was taking a break and I left my lighter. I was going to go back to work, but I had forgotten the damn lighter—it was a nice lighter. And I went back for it and I fucking regret it, because it’s sent me into a series of events that I am unprepared to handle, which could’ve been avoided if I just didn’t go back, because then I wouldn’t have seen that guy, and then I wouldn’t have made the stupidest decision to, I don’t know, pretend to be a hero, I guess, and then—then I wouldn’t have been involved in this damn conspiracy where I am the only victim that is also a suspect!” 

Rhys took a deep breath, ignored Jack stepping forward and continued. “God! And you know what’s worse? What’s worse is that my mother was right: the cigarettes were going to kill me, but haha, joke’s on her, because it won’t be from the damn lung cancer!" He viciously gestured to himself, "And I’m done! Okay, I’m done, so go ahead and airlock me because at least then I’ll get a goddamn nap!” 

At some point, Rhys had closed his eyes to reign in his boiling rage. It was like as if all the injustices he felt throughout his entire life coalesced into one rant as soon as he was faced with and questioned by the physical representation of the power structure that had him jumping through these ridiculous, life threatening hoops. 

There was unnatural and extremely uncomfortable silence that followed. 

Rhys pried open his eyes and expected to see one of the many high-end Hyperion guns pointed at his face with Jack smiling down the barrel. Instead, he saw the man leaning a few inches away from him, his hip against desk, his arms crossed, and a blank expression on his face. His posture seemed relaxed, but Rhys had heard enough stories about how quickly that man switched from amused to homicidal that he was not comfortable in the least. 

The silence was broken by laughter that took Rhys a good while to realize was coming from Jack and was not just in his head. The laughter was accompanied by a small bend at the waist and a hand smacking Rhys hard on his shoulder. 

“Oh, wow, kid,” Jack said between breaths. “That was…that was impressive. Did you even breathe? I hadn’t seen someone turn that purple since that one time I choked one of the sales guys for reading directly off of his ECHOslides during a presentation.” 

Rhys stuttered, “Wha…what?”

Jack ignored him, his finger digging into Rhys’s injured shoulder blade expressing his enjoyment. “I had thought that you were mildly entertaining drugged but oh boy, you are actually just generally fun,” his smile, once he had finished laughing, reminded Rhys of the sharks that inhabited Hermes-12. 

There were a lot of teeth as Jack leaned in, to the point of invading personal space. “There is a short list of people that would dare yell at me and it gets even shorter when you remove the ones that have died,” and just like that, Rhys had stumbled back into dangerous territory. “Which category do you think you’ll fall under?”

The question was breathed into his ear more than said to his face. Rhys was too nervous, too terrified, too everything to begin to process how close Jack was and how abnormal it was. He scrambled for a response, because it seemed as if the man was actually waiting for one to a question that appeared to be rhetorical. 

“Uh, living?” It took Rhys breathing in after speaking to register the heavy cologne that was not his own, and then the comprehension that he now knew what Handsome Jack smelled like. 

Jack let out an amused huff. “Do you want to know a secret?” He asked with no preamble, his teeth snapping down on the ‘t’. 

Rhys didn’t answer this time, but nodded his head. The movement had his hair brushing against Jack’s cheek, and allowing him a quick glance at the metal attaching the right side of the mask out from his periphery. And it was only when Rhys felt warmth on the back of his neck that he realized Jack’s hand and moved off of his shoulder. 

“I don’t think you’re guilty.” 

Whatever atmosphere had descended upon the room snapped once the meaning of Jack’s sentence settled into Rhys’s brain and had him jerking his head back as he said in a loud voice, “What?” 

Jack let him go, his hand falling away from his neck and leaning back into his original position against the desk. “Yeah, kid. I just kind of wanted to see how you would react,” He delivered with a weak wave of his hand. “I kinda figured you weren’t involved in any of this when I visited you in the hospital—no assassin worth his salt would start bawling about wanting his mommy. But I wasn’t sure…until you were almost killed; that really put the nail in the coffin, pun intended.” 

“Yo—you,” was the only word Rhys was able to form as the rage and adrenaline left his system in a solid swoosh once his brain registered that he wasn’t currently in danger.  
The rush of relief was so intense after coming off the rollercoaster of emotions Jack had put him through in a matter of minutes that Rhys actually stumbled backwards with it, his hand having to grab the curve of the desk to keep from falling. 

“So, congrats; you’re a free man!” Jack joked, throwing out his arms in an exaggerated game show host gesture, completely thrilled by Rhys’s shell-shocked reaction, “Aaaand you’ll even get a reward for your bravery in saving my precious life, but first there’s some things we need to discuss.” 

“Discuss?” Rhys repeated mindlessly, his eyes fixed on the ground as if it would bring clarity. It didn’t; the only answer it gave him was that the carpet’s pattern was made out of small H’s. 

And just like that, Jack was back up in his personal space. Distantly, Rhys thought he heard a door close, but then all of his attention was brought back to the man who had slid back up next to him. The closeness led to heat spreading up his neck and a finger tapping against his temple. 

“I’m gonna’ need to know the things you know, pumpkin,” He said, his eyes roaming lazily across Rhys’s face, which was getting progressively redder by the second. 

The actions pushed Rhys in an emotionally unstable area; if he was uncomfortable it was from confusion more than anything else. He did not know what was happening or how to react to any of it and it was leading to heat in his cheeks, the clenching of his fists, and the small tremor through his body. It was a similar reaction someone would have when faced with a predator and their only course of action was to stand perfectly still. 

Someone cleared their throat close by. 

Rhys whipped his head towards the noise, having to peer around Jack to see his assistant, Namayaka, standing right before the step up to the desk platform and looking very uncomfortable. Handsome Jack, who strove to be contrary to everything, slowly rolled his head to the side to see the shorter man; the only allowance he gave to decrease the awkwardness of the situation was dropping his hand off of Rhys’s face. 

It was Rhys that was forced to side-step Jack to gain some small distance. 

“Uh, sir, I’m sorry to inter—interrupt, but—” 

Jack turned his full body around, sending a quick glance to Rhys before cutting his assistance off, “But what?” 

“Err, the person that assaulted Mr. Rhys,” it happened so fast, but Rhys could swear that Namayaka sent him a dirty glare before continuing, “has woken up.” 

The annoyance on Jack’s face transitioned into mild approval. “Perfect. Have her brought to one of the interrogation rooms,” he commanded with clear dismissal. 

His assistant read it well enough and once he said ‘yes, sir’, turned around and left the room at a quick pace. Rhys resisted the urge to follow him, unsure if he was mentally capable of spending any more time alone with Handsome Jack. Speaking of the man, Rhys chanced a look over at the man who had moved back over to the other side of the desk and was pulling the hologram back up. 

Was he being dismissed as well? Rhys thought. 

The door swung shut behind Namayaka with a solid thud. 

“So, you really went back just for a lighter?” Jack asked a little incredulous.

Rhys nodded and then realizing that Jack wasn’t looking at him, but probably the camera footage said, “Yeah.”

Jack peered over the screen with a raised eyebrow. “You know we sell those here for like five bucks, right princess?”

“It was a, uh, one of those that had real fire that you had to spark,” Rhys mimicked the action of flipping open the lighter with his hand as if it would help and not make him look like a dweeb. 

He didn’t know if Jack caught it, because he was already looking back at his screen and typing lightning fast into a virtual keyboard that had not been present before. His face was partially blocked by the video, but Rhys could still make out the brief moment where his face settled into something that would be considered normal as he read over what he was typing before sending the message off and closing everything. 

“Yeah, that’s still a pretty dumb decision,” Jack finally commented, stepping away from the desk and giving a slight hop as he stepped down onto the carpet. He motioned for Rhys to follow who didn’t hesitate before walking as fast as his injuries would let him after the man. 

“The chick that strangled you,” Jack began, holding open the door to let Rhys pass through first. It was such an oddly courteous gesture that Rhys stumbled through the doorway in his haste to get through before the moment passed and Jack did something like slam the door in his face for kicks. “Tell me about it, and not in a ‘did you like it sorta way’. I don’t about what kind of vanilla kinks you have, but focus on the important details.” 

Rhys’s chocked on nothing hearing the word ‘kink’ come out of Jack’s mouth, and then wondering how exploratory the man’s sex life must be if he considered chocking ‘vanilla.’ He wasn’t even able to form an answer until they stepped into the elevator and Jack hit the button for the first floor.

“Well, I woke up and she was on top of me,” God, now that Jack had put sexual thoughts in his head everything he said was now painted in a red light. “Um, yeah and she as you said, strangled me. I fought back and then I ran out of the room,” he ended the tale with a shrug. 

Jack hummed as he thought. “Did she say anything?” 

Rhys almost said no, until a phrase that he had completely ignored in the moment came back to him underneath the bright lights of the descending elevator. “She said something about ‘the children of the vault’ as if it was a group she was a part of.” 

Jack didn’t comment and Rhys didn’t know if that was because he had nothing to say (unlikely) or if he didn’t want to say it to Rhys (more likely). It really didn’t matter to him, he just wanted this whole mess to be over so he could go home and sleep until Monday and then call off that day and not go into work until Tuesday. He could imagine how it would feel, sliding underneath the covers of his bed, sinking into the mattress, and then passing out for a few days. That was just a fantasy at this point, though. Rhys watched as his bed faded away into the brown walls of the elevator. 

Jack turned to pry some more information out from Rhys, but stopped when he finally got a good look at the kid. “What the hell are you wearing?” 

“Huh?” Rhys said before remembering his outfit and cringing. 

“What do you mean ‘huh’? You’re dressed like a college frat boy. Did my assistant tell you were going to a lecture and not meeting the president and CEO of Hyperion?” Jack asked incredulously just as the elevator stopped and the doors slid open. 

Rhys stepped out first in an attempt to somehow shield his clothes from view. “I just—you know…I’m injured, okay?!”

He doesn’t know where his bravado for getting short with Handsome Jack was coming from and he has a feeling that if they had met through any other situation he would not be, but having Jack acknowledge that Rhys had accidentally saved his life put them on a type of equal ground (he’s sure Jack did not think this, but Rhys certainly was beginning to). He is also sure that by the time he heals and goes back to work this familiarity will leave and he will left staring up at Jack just like every other Hyperion employee. 

“I wasn’t even aware we sold sweatpants on Helios,” Jack grinned, calmly taking a couple longer strides to walk beside Rhys. 

“I brought them from home,” Rhys admitted, rubbing his hand over the well-worn fabric. 

“Of course you did, kiddo.”

Rhys didn’t like the nickname, but he didn’t want to test how much he could get away with before Jack punched him, so he let it slide. The conversation reached its natural end, so Rhys took a moment to figure where he was being lead; Jack’s personal elevator dropping them off at a point on the first floor that he had not seen before. The walls lacked the traditional Hyperion color scheme and were left unpainted, keeping the same dull grey of the metal that built them. Each door they passed was labeled with a single number and letter: odds on the right, evens on the left. 

Jack placed a hand back on Rhys’s shoulder, the closest being his mechanical one this time, stopping him in front of the one door without a label. “Quick question before we go in: how did you fight her off?” 

Rhys had to make a few mental leaps to find the answer to Jack’s question. “Oh, you had left a glass on the side table and I smashed it into her face.” 

A devious smirk curled around his lips; satisfied, he placed his palm near a scanner by the door, letting it slide open. He gave Rhys a push forward into the room and then the door slid shut with a snap behind them. 

“Lisa!” Jack greeted, walking passed Rhys to approach a woman stood near a large glass wall surrounded by more of the same solid walls from outside. She dressed in the attire of a security guard and reacted to Jack’s entrance with a full body turn and a military straight stance. “That’s your name, right?” 

“Yes, sir,” she answered, passing Jack a comm. 

“Lisa here,” Jack began to explain immediately. “Helped me plan my assassination and is a terrifying woman.” 

Rhys had a lot of questions he wanted to ask, but decided that he was too tired to care at this point. So, he just greeted Lisa, the security guard, “Nice to meet you.” 

Jack was already pulling him to stand next to her before he had even finished the word ‘nice.’ It was only when Rhys was right next to her that he noticed Namayaka standing at the far corner typing furiously into his comm unit. 

“You and Lisa are going to stand here and watch as I interrogate the shit out of this mystery woman. At which point I will unravel their whole scheme to kill me and then they will be subsequently killed because of it by me,” Jack summarized as he pulled up a holographic screen, typed in a few codes, making glass shift into a two way mirror with a quick shimmer effect. 

Rhys could now see the woman that had attacked him in the other room. Her hands were handcuffed on top of an industrial table in an empty room. Out of reach of her hands were several items lined up across the surface, but Rhys could not make out what they were as his attention was quickly pulled to her face, which was bandaged just enough to appear to be treated but not enough to cover the damage. Her left eye was completely covered, Rhys wondered if she still had it, the rest of her face littered in red lines in a variety of widths and depths. 

There was a mix of emotions he was feeling and none of them were remotely close to proud or impressed. 

His view was cut off by Jack’s back. He must have entered the room when Rhys was busy contemplating the effects of his actions. The man walked around the room before standing slightly off center on the opposite side of the table, probably so as not to obstruct his and Lisa’s view, and began to flick through the comm. 

“Not surprising that there isn’t any record of you,” he commented, his voice coming through slightly static-like through the speakers in the viewing room. Rhys’s attention was pulled sideways briefly as Lisa typed something into her own comm and he realized she was taking notes. “You guys down in Pandora breed like rabbits. And why would we take time to care about every bitch and bastard that somehow climbs out from the nest and survives?” 

The woman did not react; her face remaining steady and expressing the same amount of contempt as when Jack entered. 

“I figure your mother was just another whore that didn’t get her proper shots and was forced to spit you out so she could continue working on her back,” he continued.  
Rhys winced at the harsh statement. 

“It’s not familial,” Lisa said as if sensing Rhys’s thoughts. 

“What?”

“He’s testing to see what motivates her and family is the most common, but look at the way her face doesn’t change,” Lisa replied, still typing. 

Rhys looked at her with confusion before turning back to watch Jack now looking at his actions in a different light. The man continued to evenly dismantle any family member that she might have had and remotely cared about with statements that went from bad to worse to horrible and yet she remained the same as before. 

It was impressive; Rhys would have been clawing at the table to get to Jack at this point.

After several minutes of this, Jack placed the comm unit down on the table barely out of reach of the woman and shifted focus. “I understand how frustrating this must be, I mean, how long did you plan this for, a month?”

Her eye widen a small fraction. 

Jack laughed, humorlessly. “Oh, yeah. We know how long you and your partner have been living on this station spying on me. It’s a little sad actually, people admire me but what you guys have done really crosses the border into obsessive stalker territory. Is this like a ‘if I can’t have him no one will’ thing?” 

It was mostly a joke, just meant to rattle. Namayaka coughed in the back, Rhys hadn't even realized he was there before Jack spoke again and Rhys forgot about his assistant.

“Doesn’t matter; what matters is that you failed, which circles back to my comment about how frustrated you must be. I can’t imagine putting that much time into planning all of this just to have some nobody kid who just wanted a smoke throw a wrench into your whole scheme. I would be furious if I was you.” 

“Well, no, I wouldn’t actually,” jack dropped his even tone and dipped into something more sinister. His hand griped the back of her chair and he leaned in close on her blind side. “You know why? Because I wouldn’t have failed. If I wanted someone dead, they would be dead and nothing would be able to stop me until my hands were covered in their blood. This is what makes me so different from you scum; I have the will to follow through while all you guys do throw stones at the shiny thing in the sky that reminds you of how weak and small you are.” 

She growled, which was the only indication given before she turned and snapped her teeth at him like a wild animal. Jack had already moved smoothly out of reach as if he knew she was going to react like that, and Rhys wondered what kind of life you would have to live to expect that type of response. 

“Down, girl,” he ordered, circling around to where he originally stood. 

He let his hands dance over the items finally acknowledging them but not touching them. The woman’s face was back to a steady contempt before Jack even decided to pick something up. His first choice was a mean looking knife sharpened to two points with a handle made of ripped clothes; he lazily spun it before placing it back down.

He repeated this with a few more items: another smaller knife, a long cord, and a broken pocket watch. 

Rhys was curious about the point of this; Jack wasn’t even asking any questions. He tried to split his time evenly between watching the woman and analyzing Jack’s actions. It wasn’t until Jack’s hand hovered for a beat over one of the items and Rhys saw the quick, blink-and-you-miss-it, flash of protest across the woman’s face that he understood Jack’s intentions. 

“Ah-ha,” Jack echoed, picking up item. 

“Found it,” Lisa commented. 

It looked like a large glow stick to Rhys. It was of a similar cylindrical shape, it even emitted the same neon glow, but in a shade between blue and purple that Rhys had never seen. He doesn’t know how it didn’t notice it before. 

“Is this important?” Jack rhetorically asked, swinging the glow stick between his thumb and index finger. 

The woman for the first time spoke. “That is not to be touched by the hands of the unsaved,” she hissed out filled with a level of vitriol that had Rhys’s eyes widening in surprise.  
Even Lisa’s typing halted at that. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jack supplied. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me: you’re one of the saved?”

The woman said nothing, her eye only fixed on the glow stick. She followed every movement as Jack traced his fingers along the sides until he found a lip of a lid. She lunged across the table, the handcuffs doing their job of jerking her back before she got more than an inch. 

“That is not for the UNSAVED!”

It wasn’t until Jack began to pry off the lid on the glow stick that Rhys realized that the woman’s expression had shifted at some point from furious to fearful. He was halfway posed to ask Lisa if she noticed when a foreign force hit him, running a current up his spine making all the hair on his body stand up, followed by a wave of silence like all the sound was sucked out of the air.

In the next breath, all the sound came back once, shattering the glass and rattling the walls. 

\--

What most people didn’t know about Rhys is that he grew up on Eden-4. 

This is not because he has actively tried to hide the information, but because of a lack of people bothering to ask. The Hyperion way was to inquire no further into someone’s past than university. This is due to a combination of not caring and not having anything to brag about: most people only wanted to show how much better they were than you and that was done easily through talking about what university they got into and not what backwoods planet they grew up on. 

Eden-4 was a backwoods planet.

But everyone only knew that Rhys attended university on Eden-5 (not a backwoods planet).

This was pretty common since anyone wanting to work at Hyperion knew that the fast track to a position was going to any university on Eden-5; often called the E5 universities as a collective. This wasn’t abnormal; most of the large corporations had control over at least one planet of which they picked their future workers from. 

For example, anyone wanting to work at Maliwan had to attend the universities on Brevia-9; if you wanted in the door at Vladof you had to go to Yannec-2. This gave students a distinct feeling that they were learning company specific information, which would prepare them for their future corporate careers--this was not the case. All the courses were pretty much the same: programming was programming no matter where you went in the solar system the only difference being that if you attended a Maliwan school you got the history of C++ along with a healthy dose of Faust. 

(Vladof courses came with the entire enterprise of the USSR). 

Most students realized that about the second year in when their buddies attending other colleges were complaining about similar trick questions on their finals. Rhys did not have any friends on other planets, because all of his stayed on Eden-4.

That was another thing many people didn’t know: those that were born on Eden-4 tended to stay on Eden-4. 

It was a lifer planet, made of blue collar workers since all of the profit came from the precious metal mines that littered its surface. 

So, Rhys’s mother like most adults on Eden-4 was a miner. She worked from sun up to sun down, six days a week in a mine three minutes outside of their house. (It was advertised to be convenient, but really it just meant that she was never really able to leave work; the smoke following her into her home even after she had stepped out of the mine). 

Unlike most adults on Eden-4; however, his mother wanted him to leave. She poured every moment of her life once he was born to make sure he had a better chance at life than her. He didn’t know that as a kid of course, but once he was teenager and was able to look past his own selfishness, he saw how much she had given him—it took him even longer to say thank you for it (and it was a little too late). 

But one thing that he had learned from her at an early age was that life was like a boxing match where you were most likely going to lose the first rounds and you were going to have to take a few hits before you earned the opportunity to hit back. 

He carried this mentality with him through his life, not really needing to rely on it that often thanks to the efforts of his mom to shield from most of the blows.

But, it is because of this that Rhys was able to pick himself up even with his injuries before Lisa and Namayaka had gotten back on their feet. Glass crunched under his sneakers as he stood, the air smelled like ozone, and anything that hadn’t been bolted down was scattered around the room. There was a ringing in his ears again, but it wasn’t coming from his eardrums, but a series of alarms echoing outside of the room. 

Lisa groaned from his left. 

He turned towards the sound, the flickering lights not helping with the massive headache that was causing spots in his vision, but he saw an outline of her having been flung against the far wall. He headed over and made it half way before his wobbly legs stepped on a piece of glass that slid over the floor taking his foot with it. He didn’t have a quick enough reaction to catch himself and braced for more hurt when a hand grabbed his flailing arm and another wrapped around his waist. 

“Careful, princess,” the unmistakable voice of Jack said, amused. 

“Thanks,” Rhys breathed out with a sigh of relief, rebalancing himself amid the uneven ground. “What the hell was that, a grenade?”

Jack snorted, dropping his hold and stepping in front of Rhys. He looked the same as before, the only thing giving him away was the disheveled state of his clothes: his jacket was torn over the right elbow, the layers beneath were either riding up or dipping low, and his pants covered with dust and micro-shards of glass. If it wasn't for that, Rhys would have never guessed the man had just been thrown across a room. 

“Would have I picked it up if it was a grenade?” Jack pointedly asked, sending Rhys a disbelieving look. 

Rhys shrugged, but didn’t argue. 

“Anyways, I know what caused that explosion and it wasn’t from a weapon,” Jack tacked on half-handedly, while completing Rhys’s goal of helping Lisa back to her feet. She, like Jack didn’t look too worse for wear, but unlike him was sporting a rather pissed off look. 

“What does that mean?” Lisa and Rhys both asked at the same time; Rhys’s tone confused and Lisa’s vengeful. 

Instead of answering, Jack looked across the broken the viewing window and at the woman he had been interrogating. She was still chained to the table, her head down either knocked out or dead; Rhys didn’t know which one would be a worse fate.

“Because that type of force is only generated by sirens.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lesson to be taken: don't read directly off your powerpoint slides!


	5. I Hope the Worst Isn't Over (I hope it stays dark forever)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy, my lovely readers!!

[Somewhere on Pandora]

The desert sands were, like most days, hot and endless. The sun was an oppressive presence in the cloudless sky that beat down on the surface without interruption; it was one of those afternoons that looked pretty from a distance but were hell to actually live through. And the current group walking through it could attest to the horrendousness of the experience. 

It was a group of about fifty.

Some were on foot; others were in makeshift cars and trucks rolling slowly alongside those who didn’t have another form of transportation. They made sure to remain as a group, though. It wasn’t perfectly formed more of a scattered collection than an organized march, but the sentiment was there. Which would have been an odd sight for two reasons: one, the very presence of a somewhat peaceful group of people on Pandora was rare and two, the group was made of bandits. 

Psychos, marauders, goliaths; all moving as a group and not killing each other. 

If they had been walking through a part of Pandora that had inhabitants, it would have caused everyone to stop and stare at the sight. As it was, the only living things privy to this sight were the vultures and occasional skag that came too close and was subsequently shot and eaten by the nearest bandits. 

Some of them dropped from exhaustion, some from heat-stroke, and some just simple continuous exposure to the elements, but that did not slow the mass. They left those that fell behind and continued forward, because this was not a clan or a collective.

It was an exodus. 

\--

“She’s a siren?!” Rhys asked even adding a pointed finger at the woman just to make sure that Jack and him were talking about the same person; the same person that had tried to kill him and failed, foiled by a single glass cup. “Aren’t they supposed to be like super strong--ow!”

Jack interrupted Rhys, smacking the back of his head hard enough to send it tipping forward into his chest. “No, stupid. If she was a siren then those handcuffs wouldn’t have done fuck all at holding her in here, and I know you were thinking it, so I will also add that if she was a siren you wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving,” he lectured, hitting Rhys one more time for his idiocy. 

“But the item she had…” Lisa interjected, looking less murderous than when she clamored to her feet and a little more curious. 

“See,” Jack gestured to her while sending a very pointed look at Rhys, “she gets it. The thing—glow stick—piece of glowing junk—I picked up did have siren power in it.” 

“Which was released when you opened it,” Rhys finished, catching up and glancing over at the passed out woman who had been carrying it. Lisa crossed in front of him, carefully picking her way through the glass and broken bits of wall to hop into the interrogation room and crouch down at the explosion’s origin point. “They bottled it.”

“And it gets even more interesting than that, cupcake,” Jack added from Rhys’s right side. “I—”

The door burst open, drawing everyone’s attention towards the doorway that was now completely covered by the hulking yellow frame of a loader bot. It took two long strides into the room, arm cannons out and was then followed by five security officers, which fanned out around the bot. It was up until this point that Rhys remembered there was a type of law enforcement on Helios and it was not just every man for himself (which had been his life for the past day). 

“Non-authorized personal detected,” the mechanical voice of the bot said, whirling up his canons and pointing them directly at the person standing beside Handsome Jack.  
The noise Rhys made was definitely an ‘eep’ as he automatically raised his one arm in surrender and stared down the barrel of the heated guns in fear. 

“Override code-326B9,” Jack lazily inserted, placing a hand on one of the canons and lowering it to the ground. He turned and rolled his eyes at Rhys like ‘can you believe what I have to deal with’ expression as he moved over to the lead guard, completely ignoring Rhys’s brush with death by bot.

“You!” He yelled unnecessarily loud, pointing at a man who was probably the captain. “Yeah, I need—”

Rhys didn’t hear what Jack was requesting of the man, because he was too busy trying to get his heartbeat back at a proper pace. The loader bot whirled down its canons as soon as Jack finished speaking the code, looking as disappointed as a robotic face could look. His servos made some sort of whine sound as he heavily stepped over to the back wall and waited at attention. 

Rhys followed all of this with a suspicious side-eye, which is the only reason that he saw a hand peeking out from underneath a collection of rubble. He didn’t even remember anyone else being in the room, but he couldn’t just leave a person trapped like that, so he half-walked, half-climbed over to the pale hand. It was in the back corner of the room and the amount of rubble covering it was actually a lot less than as it appeared from a distance. Once he got close, he could also see two legs and part of a torso; there was only one piece of wall that had been covering the rest of the person. 

He hoped it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. 

Rhys calculated the easiest way to tackle it and decided to go for one of the longer corners and just lift with his legs and pray that he didn’t pull a stitch. It would have been nice to have his other limb, which would have made this process ten times easier: his cybernetic arm could have lifted the debris without a problem. Still, he walked over and carefully crouched down, the long corner was near the person’s right leg and judging from the pants, it was a Hyperion worker at least, and they were making muffled noises. 

At least they were alive and Rhys wasn’t going through all this work for a dead body. 

He placed his arm up to his elbow underneath the piece, took a few readying breaths, and then pushed up. It came up incrementally as Rhys added more strength, unbending his legs and using the power from his lower body to lift it higher. It hurt like a son-of-bitch, but the positive progress was motivating him to continue until he had it high enough to shift his hand to actually grip an edge and then roll it off to the side. It landed with a thud and a puff of dust, causing Rhys to cough and wave the particles away from his face.

His coughing was echoed by the person the ground. 

“Namayaka?” And as soon as Rhys saw him, he suddenly remembered that the assistant had been in the room with them. 

“Are you okay?” He asked, lending the man a hand. 

The assistance glanced at the offered hand, but waved it away and stood on his own, using the wall to pull himself up and back on his feet. He didn’t look too bad; he was only bleeding from one spot from a shallow cut on his forehead. The rest of him was in a similar state to everyone else who had been hit by the explosion: torn clothes, covered in dust, and looking a little shaken and off-balance. 

“Fine,” he bit out a second later not looking once looking at Rhys. The other man shrugged it off, if he had been buried underneath a piece of wall for an extending period of time, he would be pissed off too. 

“Well, if—” 

The programmer was about to offer assistance but was interrupted by Jack hollering for him. “Rhys!”

Rhys gave one more look at Namayaka posted up against the wall before turning around and answering Handsome Jack’s call. He looked around for him and found the CEO in the interrogation side of the room just as two guards uncuffed the woman from the table and began dragging her out. Jack was back to talking with Lisa and the captain he had yelled for earlier; he now held the empty container that led to all of this in his hand. 

He turned to Rhys as he approached. “There you are, kid. I need you to go with Lisa here and review some footage. The asshole that shot me is still breathing air and that is not acceptable; you’ve seen his face go point him out for me so I can find him quickly and kill him,” Jack ordered before turning back to the captain, clearly reaching the end of his rope in terms of patience. “You’re going to make sure nothing leaves this station like I had ordered and that also means no entering, which apparently you are having trouble with since I hear that at least three shuttles have disembarked on Helios in the past few hours—”

“No,” Rhys firmly said, interrupting Jack—no, Handsome Jack—he was in full leader of Hyperion persona right now. 

The silence that followed was similar to the one Rhys experienced right before the explosion; however, this one seemed to carry more ominous danger. Jack shifted ever so slowly, turning his face away from the captain to make full eye contact with Rhys, his expression was carefully guarded. Rhys was sure everyone was looking at them, but the magnetic quality of Jack’s attention caused everything else to blur into an unfocused background, and narrow down to him and only him. 

“What was that, princess?”

Rhys swallowed around the words a few times before managing to push them out, “I just meant that—”

Jack struck out lightning quick, fisting his hand into Rhys’s sweater with enough strength to have the younger man stumble forward. “No, you don’t get to pussyfoot out of this. What did you say to me?” 

His voice had dipped back into that dangerous calmness that had Rhys’s heart jump into a double time beat like a conditioned response. It made him want to immediately apologize and then crawl back into obscurity, but something in Jack’s eyes contradicted his voice and spoke of challenge like he was daring Rhys to say it again. 

And Rhys had his brain jumbled just enough times this day to make that seem like a good idea. “I said, ‘no’,” He spoke evenly, but found his eyes unable to sustain contact. He was close enough that his whole vision was Jack’s face; avoiding the eyes only led him to staring at the man’s jaw. 

“Now, I know that you’ve been entered into a world that you are not a part of,” Jack began, his hand clenching and unclenching Rhys’s shirt as he spoke. “And I have allowed certain leniencies because of that, but do not be mistaken I can send you back to the third class masses at any time, because at the end of the day, you don’t belong here.” 

And that was the truth wasn’t it: Rhys didn’t belong here. He just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time and was thrust into this mess because he managed to accidentally survive. This how-ever-long day might as well have been a fantasy because on Monday he would go back to his job where he hated his coworkers and hated his boss, but he would sit down at his desk anyways and do his job. Nothing was going to change; he would disappear from the minds of these people, from the mind of Jack. As soon as the clock struck twelve all the pumpkins would turn back into mice and Rhys would be left with a scar and story and nothing else. 

He doesn’t know why that hurts as much as it does. 

“You’re right, I don’t,” the hurt was an easy fuel to burn to feed his anger. It gave Rhys a false bravado, allowing him to look directly into Jack’s heterochromia eyes as he demanded, “So it shouldn’t be a problem to give me my arm back and then let me leave.” 

“Leave?” Jack muttered the word almost as an afterthought. “You don’t get to decide when to opt out, princess. I do and I gave you an order.”

“You promised me a reward,” Rhys transitioned. The first sign of genuine anger flashed across Jack’s eyes as Rhys threw his words back at him. “I want my arm back and then I want to go home.” 

Jack’s eyes roamed around the features of Rhys’s face, calculating. “That’s two requests, doll.” 

“I want my arm back and then I’m going home,” Rhys replied quickly and with a glance into Jack’s narrowed eyes added, “you said so yourself: you don’t need me here.”

“Oh, don’t take that personally, kitten. I’ve never needed anyone in my life,” He delivered the words like a promise, but his hand clenched painfully into Rhys’s sweater contradicting his steady speech. Jack raised his other hand, tracing up the empty sleeve until he hit the point where the metal shoulder met skin, revealed because of his grip on the sweater, and dug his fingers in. His eyes locked onto to Rhys’s the entire time so that he could see the moment the younger man winced from the discomfort. “But, I wouldn’t want to keep you here against your will, I’m not,” he dug his nails in deeper, “cruel.” 

“Great,” Rhys answered through clenched teeth, desperately keeping in any noise that would reveal his pain.

Jack’s eyes were practically glowing when Rhys finally looked back up. “Perfect,” he purred and then every form of warmth and weight that had been added to Rhys because of Jack’s presence left all at once. With a subtle shove, Rhys was pushed back into the present and he took in, what felt like his first full breath. 

“Your arm’s in Mechanics,” was the last thing Jack said before turning his back to Rhys and continuing issuing instructions as if nothing had dragged his attention away in the first place. There was a small change to Jack though, in the way his shoulders were held tight and his hands shaking bad enough that he shoved them into his pockets a beat later.

But Rhys was already stumbling out of the destroyed interrogation room and never noticed any of this.

\--

The Mechanics department’s receptionist gave Rhys a subtle once over before handing the man a card with a three digit number and a barcode after Rhys had given his name and employee ID. He was directed to take the card and follow the arrows to “Requisitioned Items” room where his arm would in a bin matching the code on the card. Unlike most Hyperion employees, this guy was pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing, animatedly directing Rhys, and he assigned it to the kid’s youth. 

He’d be dead inside like the rest of us soon, Rhys thought bitterly as he meandered down the light blue halls lined with safety procedure posters listing what one should and should not bring aboard Helios. These were accompanied by cartoonish Hyperion employees making sad or happy faces depending on which bullet point they were drawn in next to. 

There was one that looked a little too much like Yvette to be a coincidence. He made a mental note to ask her about that later as he headed into the Requisitioned Items room.  
As expected, the place was filled with rows and rows of aisles that stretched up to the ceiling with shelves of confiscated items taken from over the years. Each aisle was labeled with the item type, so Rhys walked until he saw “Prosthetics” in a list of four other things and turned down it. He passed by a few robots stacking and moving things as needed; they did not bother to greet him and he assumed since they only worked down here they were not programmed to. 

He scanned the shelves lining up each side of the aisle for his number: 716. 

He had walked about half-way down, his shoes squeaking over the tile until he reached it. His arm was on the other side of a glass case, thankfully eye level so he didn’t need to go get a robot to fetch it for him. He simply inserted the card into the provided slot and the case opened with a slow, smooth movement. 

Just like that, he had his arm back in hand. 

He wasn’t sure if it was down to the overwhelmingly fluorescent lights of this warehouse, but the yellow seemed brighter than before and not as chipped. It was a problem for another time, Rhys decided, pulling off his sweater right there a reattaching the limb with a snap and twist. 

It was such a relief to have the weight back. The whole time without it he had felt himself listing to the side if he stood still for too long, but now he was whole again and all the other injuries seemed to hit just a little bit less. 

He rolled the shoulder a bit, making sure it was properly attached and all the mechanics were still in working order. He then continued the movement to his wrist before curling his fingers into a fist and did not experience any delays between his brain and the arm. 

Satisfied, he pulled his sweater back on, grabbed the card, and walked out with a little more bounce in his step than he had when he had entered. He tossed the card back to the receptionist and left the Mechanic’s Department behind. 

\--

The joy he had felt getting his arm back lasted no longer than a few hours. 

Once he had gotten back to his apartment, read the note Vaughn left saying he was going out and wouldn’t be back until morning, (this prompted Rhys to check the time and realize that it was morning, 2:05am to be exact), collapsed on the couch with the thought that he was only going to rest there for a few minutes before going to his bed, and then promptly passed out. 

He awoke the next day (same day?) with the smell of coffee. 

It took three attempts to finally sit up from the couch, not only was his body protesting from the injuries but also from not sleeping on a bed, carrying the usual aches and pains that came from sleeping on a small surface. He relied mainly on his cybernetic arm to push himself up and back his feet so that he could half-walk, half-stumble towards the delicious call of caffeine. 

“Should you be drinking coffee in your state?” Vaughn asked, side-eying the large cup Rhys was filling with black liquid to only then immediately gulp down a majority of it. He was cooking again, this time it was bacon sizzling on the pan. 

Rhys shrugged his answer. “What time is it?” 

“2 in the afternoon,” he said, handing Rhys one of the cooked pieces of bacon laying on towel on the kitchen counter.

Rhys shoved the whole piece into his mouth, muttering a ‘thanks’ before refilling his coffee cup. “When did you get home?”

“Probably around 5am,” Vaughn said, sliding the done bacon out of the pan. “I saw you asleep on the couch and thought about moving you, but you’re like twice my height, dude and it would’ve ended poorly.” 

“Thanks for the thought, bro.”

Vaughn turned back to the stove and started scrambling some eggs. Rhys took a moment to calmly breathe in the steam curling out from the coffee in his hand. Just that made him feel about five times more human than he did when he woke up—all he needed now was a smoke. Even just thinking about it made the itch start, his free hand began to tap against the counter in anticipation. 

Vaughn cleared his throat as he turned off the stove and piled all the eggs and bacon he made onto a plastic plate. “So, uh, what happened with Handsome Jack?” 

You don’t belong here. Rhys’s metal hand curled around the mug tight enough for it to groan as the memories of the previous day filtered back in with haunting clarity. His eyes followed the groves in the tile beneath while he answered, “Nothing much; he just wanted to know what I knew and then that was it.” 

“So, that’s it? You’re no longer a suspect?”

“Huh?” Rhys looked up, confused. And then he remembered that he had once worried about that. “Oh, yeah, no, I’m in the clear,” he said with faked enthusiasm because the emptiness he was feeling is something that he wouldn’t be able to explain to Vaughn; his emotions didn’t even make sense to himself. 

Vaughn raised his fork in celebration. “That’s great, man! I thought for sure you were going to get floated and then I’d be down a friend and a roommate—I didn’t want to search for a new roommate, it’s a pain in the ass.” 

Rhys pushed away the turmoil swirling in his head and focused on the present, raising a hand to wipe away pretend tears. “The amount of love I feel from you right now is just unreal; its makin’ my heart go all aflutter. You wanna make-out for a bit just to see how it feels?”

His best friend almost snorted up a piece of egg in surprise. “I’ve seen your technique, Rhys; if I wanted that much slobber I’d kiss a dog.” 

“I drool one time and I never hear the end of it,” Rhys said, rolling his eyes. “I’d like to point out that I was drunk and high, so the very fact that I was able to find her mouth was an impressive feat.” 

“Whatever, dude, just keep your spit away from me,” he demanded through a smile, pushing his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose from where they were riding down and digging back into his breakfast/lunch. 

Rhys dropped his eyes absentmindedly to his coffee and watched as the liquid rolled in the mug as he turned it this way and that. 

It was done.

This living nightmare he had thrown himself into without a second thought was officially done. The Children of the Vault or whoever that had tried to kill him for interfering now had no cause to go after him—he had told Jack everything. One of them was locked away and it was only a matter of time with Helios closed off to the outside, that Jack would find the original shooter. The longest day of Rhys’s life was done—he was back to be being a worker who enjoyed a good cup of coffee on a Saturday afternoon and tried not to think about going back to work on Monday.

He was just Rhys, associate programmer. 

“Hey, but in all seriousness,” Vaughn spoke from behind Rhys, startling him out of his thoughts. Apparently, he had finished his food and had turned around right before entering his bedroom. Like the words he spoke, his face was serious as he looked directly at Rhys. “I’m glad that this is all over; I was worried I was going to have to find a new best friend.”

“Yeah, thanks, man,” Rhys replied not having to force the small smile as Vaughn disappearing into his room. The wave of disappointment that crashed through Rhys afterward had nothing to do with Vaughn himself but in the finality of his words. 

\--

The rest of Saturday and the entirety of Sunday passed in a lazily blur as Rhys spent most of his time slouched into the couch cushions watching whatever trash TV was on and trying not to think about how unimportant he was. They always said that the high was only as good as the crash that followed, but damn, he had never expected this—he could barely imagine going into work and having Vasquez throw insults his way without becoming inexplicably angry. 

Vaughn had observed this new behavior in a way that one would watch an animal in the wild: cautiously and with a fair amount of distance. On Sunday morning as he sat on the ground playing with Peaches, he watched as Rhys got up from the couch, walked to the kitchen, pulled out a tub of ice cream, sat back down on said couch, and then preceded to eat the entire carton while watching a reality TV show about rich teens on an island. 

It was eight in the morning.

Vaughn had decided that leaving Rhys to his own devices was probably best. He couldn’t even figure out what was wrong; he was acting like he went through a tough breakup and had not just survived being shot. He hoped it was just the medication filtering out of his system making him weird, because Vaughn didn’t know if he could handle living with this Rhys—it was sad and not in a good way. 

Rhys hadn’t really noticed Vaughn’s conflict or presence really. The junk food was doing a solid job of keeping him in a carb-coma, turning him into a literal couch potato. In the few moments of clarity he had, he wondered if this is what mid-life crisis felt like—the realization that everything in your life up to this point was small and meaningless and that you would never amount to anything more than what you are now. These moments were brief though and passed by as soon as the commercials ended and the teens started yelling at each other in varying levels of planet-specific dialects. 

Monday came with the worst sugar hangover Rhys had ever experienced and the heavy dread that he would have to be around other living humans. This led to a two minute long groan as he rolled off the couch and stumbled into his bedroom, forcing himself into a shower. 

It did the trick of making him feel a little more alive and less like a walking corpse, which gave him the energy to draw on his back-up work outfit (since he lost his somewhere between falling and waking up in the hospital) that consisted of a Hyperion blue shirt, black jacket, and pants that were just a little too tight, but it was the best he could without buying new clothes. So, he pulled on the clothes and attempted to get back into the mindset of the Rhys that had happily existed as a Hyperion employee before Friday at 11am.

He had pulled off the bandages on his nose on Sunday after they had gotten so itchy he was about to claw his face off. It wasn’t too bad underneath, still very much bruised and swollen, but everything held in place well enough that he decided that it was probably fine. It just looked like he went two rounds with a goliath and lost, horribly. In a feat of bravery the previous night, he had also checked his stitches expecting the worst, but was pleasantly surprised to find they had all held and it seemed to be healing pretty well (with his limited knowledge of anatomy). 

He popped a few Advil before leaving with his to-go cup just in case and rolled into work five minutes early, which hadn’t happened since he was first hired. He headed towards his own small office on the left side of the main space without making eye contact with anyone to avoid questions. He closed the door behind him and settled into the space he had spent the last year of his life in (ever since he had gotten that promotion and was able to leave the bullpen). 

It was just like he had left it for his break three days ago: his computer in rest mode, handwritten notes on certain programs he was still working out, and files on the quarterly reports scattered across the L-shaped desk. With a sigh, he rolled out his chair and picked up where he had left off. 

It wasn’t until he had worked through lunch that someone had come knocking at his door telling him that the boss wanted to meet with him. Rhys figured it was about his absence on Friday, which he had spent some of his time trying to craft a believable excuse (because saying he had foiled an assassination on Handsome Jack was not an easy sell). So, he waved the person away saying he would be there in a few without much worry. 

Henderson’s office was placed like most supervisors’ offices, in the back center of the room so that it metaphorically looked over everyone while still being in view of every single worker that walked through the front entrance. Rhys didn’t visit it often, Henderson didn’t make a habit of interacting with his workers or even doing his job, but as an associate there were necessary meetings he had to attend in the boss’s office. It was usually during these meetings that he fantasized about what it would be like to have the office as his own, but now—now it seemed like such small fish after walking through Handsome Jack’s. 

“Ah, Rhys, nice of you to show,” Vasquez’s slow drawl accompanied Rhys’s entrance. 

Rhys’s eyes narrowed down to Vasquez standing behind Henderson’s desk and refused to acknowledge what that implied. He took a moment to glance around the room, but everything else looked the same except, “Where’s Henderson?”

Vasquez raised an arrogant, perfectly shaped eyebrow and motioned for the other man to sit down in one of the empty chairs. Rhys didn’t move. “Well, that’s a long story, Rhys. I don’t want to bother with the details, but let’s just say he went out for some fresh air and had an accident.” 

Rhys shoved his flesh hand into his pocket to hide its shaking.

“But what I want to know is how you’re doin’, buddy, because you look terrible. Rough weekend?” The well-coiffed man asked in fake sympathy. 

“Something like that,” Rhys gave a non-answer through clenched teeth. “So, what you just promoted yourself to the Head of Programming?”

Vasquez migrated to the other side of the desk, shuffling a few papers just for the act of looking busy. “I was going to report Henderson’s untimely death, but then that whole shooting had everyone so busy that I figured one lonely fatal accident was the least of everyone’s worries. And to make it even easier, I took it upon myself to lead this department; I mean, it’s not like you were here.”

He paused for dramatic effect and Rhys resisted the urge to punch the man in his stupid fucking face. “And with that is going to come with a few changes. Henderson, well, he just wasn’t running this department at its max efficiency, which leads us to the present and why I had you called in here. I feel like your true talents have been wasted in your current position.” 

“Wasted…” Rhys repeated drily. 

Vasquez smirked and nodded. “Yes, you agree, right? So, I thought ‘geez, what is Rhys the best at?’ And then it hit me,” he walked up to Rhys during his short speech so he could rest a heavy hand on the younger man’s stiff shoulder. “He’s made to pick up other people’s trash—you get to be the proud Vice President of Janitorial Services.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Janitor Rhys has arrived!
> 
> Title is taken from a Mountain Goats song called No Children, aka, Rhack theme song


	6. Wiggle, Wiggle; Slow it Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love reading all your comments, you guys are the sweetest and I hope that you enjoy this latest chapter! I have introduced some little pieces of plot along with a reintroduction of someone from the first chapter.

[Two Weeks Later]

As most people would assume, being a janitor was not a fun job. In fact, it was quite the opposite of fun, Rhys would even rank it under “one of the worse jobs ever” right next to the guys that had to tend to the animal cages at the Hyperion Preserve, and that was only ranked slightly higher on the terrible scale because there was a strong chance of maiming. Now, Rhys’s life wasn’t on the line with this job but he still had to clean bathrooms so it was a very, very close second.

There were several stages he went through to get to the point he was at now, two weeks later. The first was confusion as Vasquez ushered him out of his office with directions to report directly to janitorial services on the fourth floor, east side. He existed in that confusion until someone handed him his new work outfit, which consisted of a jumpsuit and a mesh vest. The second stage was anger as the same worker rolled a cleaning cart towards him after he had changed and told him that a meeting room 403 needed to be cleaned before 3pm.

When Rhys had asked why he had to do this if he was the technically the VP, the other janitor, Sammy, laughed like he just said the funniest joke before shoving him out the door.

The third stage, despair, hit him hard when he clocked out and came back home that same day. Vaughn had asked the inevitable questions and Rhys answered by simply laying face down on the floor in the living room without moving for an hour. Vaughn had put the reaction and the new clothes together and made four (he cooked Rhys nachos that night in sympathy). The fourth stage was the one that had lasted the longest and the one Rhys currently existed in: apathy.

If this had happened to him at any other point in his life, he would have probably made some sort of devious plan to poison Vasquez or found a way to steal his title right from underneath him, but after being so close to the top of the food chain (and having his life put into perspective through repeated violence), everything beneath the title of CEO started to become the same.

Associate programmer or janitor what was the difference?

He still had to deal with people’s shit it just came in different forms.

Even so, being a janitor had some perks. One, no one really paid him any attention so he could essentially take breaks whenever he wanted—this led to even more smoke breaks. Two, he got to travel to every floor of Helios, so he wasn’t stuck behind a desk in a single room all day. These are the things he tells himself whenever he has to clean up puke or any other forms of bodily fluids (some people had apparently embraced the path of sleeping their way to the top).

It was because of this new freedom he had during work that allowed him to actually have regular lunch breaks with Yvette and Vaughn.

“So, I discovered something interesting today,” Yvette said as an introduction, pulling up a chair from another table and joining Rhys and Vaughn. She was dressed impeccably as always, but sat with an urgency that cool people like her didn’t usually display. “I just came from a meeting and for the first time ever I had to listen to the VP of sales say that Hyperion shares were dropping.”

“What?” Vaughn asked around a chicken wing, his eyes either going wide from the information or the amount of spice they had put in the rub.

The woman nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think it’s enough to affect company pay or bonuses…yet, but it certainly isn’t increasing quarterly like it used to. They had put a lot of money into real estate through building places like Opportunity and just revamping Pandora in general, but Handsome Jack has all but been ignoring those projects recently.”

“So, they’re throwing money at something that isn’t being built?” Rhys interjected.

“Essentially, and the shareholders have noticed,” Yvette emphasized her point with a wave of her fork before spearing a carrot and eating it. “The meeting was hella tense and I pity the person who has to deliver that particular piece of news to Jack.”

Rhys snorted in agreement. Spending anytime with Jack had been like riding a roller-coaster blindfolded: the highs and lows were unexpected and equally terrifying, and Rhys had, at least for a part of it, been on Jack’s good side (from what he could tell).

“I mean,” Yvette mumbled and stopped. She nervously surveyed the lunch area, one of many aboard Helios. This one was on the third floor and was decided as a mid-point between where all three friends worked. Like the others, it was a round, open area filled with tables, booths, couches and various places to buy cuisine found from the majorly populated planets. Her gaze settled back on the table once she did a sweep of the room and leaned in close. “It’s a little early to speculate, but if this trend continues the only natural thing to do would be to start looking for a new CEO.”

Now, Rhys was truly shocked. He stared at Yvette with an incredulous expression and felt the same urge she did, immediately looking for someone listening or standing too close.

“I—I think that’s treasonous,” Vaughn exaggerated, but in reality, wasn’t too far off. “Don’t they behead people for saying things like that?”  
Rhys nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

Yvette shrugged and leaned back in her chair, taking a sip of water. “I’m just saying; having a CEO like Handsome Jack is only profitable if there’s actual money coming in. Without that this place just becomes like any other bandit camp on Pandora: murder, murder, and more murder.”

“So, it’s civilized now because it’s motivated by money?” Rhys summarized with an amused expression.

“Precisely.”

Vaughn stared forlornly at his mash potatoes, “I don’t want to work at Jacobs; there is waaaaaay too much yee-haw, I don’t look good in cowboy boots. I’m too short, it doesn’t work.”

Rhys munched on a butter roll, while asking, “Why don’t you just pick a different company in this imaginative future?”

“Their headquarters are on my home planet,” He replied. “My mom would expect me to come back home if this doesn’t work out.”

“You’re from Holland-9?” Yvette interjected.

“Yeah and I suffered,” the account cringed from the memories. “So many pictures of me in chaps…just, so many.”

Yvette scrunched her face in response as the images filtered unwanted through her mind. She compensated for it by digging into a very unhealthy slice of triple chocolate cake. Rhys was too busy wondering if the assassination had anything to do with Yvette’s new information, but something just wasn’t fitting right. He shoved the remaining food around on his plate, before sighing and pushing the whole thing away from him. Yvette didn’t waste any time dragging it towards her with a knife and claiming the extra food as hers.

Rhys then stood. “Well, in the case that we weren’t recorded, I’ll be seeing you in a few hours and if we were, well—it’s been nice knowing you guys but I’ve got some stuff to scrub.”

Vaugh stopped him with a hand on his elbow. “Dude, seriously, let me know if you want Vasquez to disappear. I’m not very good at fighting and I’ve never killed anyone, but I’d totally help you bury the body or I could just make all his savings go ‘poof’,” he offered like he did ever since Rhys had gotten demoted.

“I know you would, bro,” Rhys said solemnly, giving Vaughn’s hand a pat and glancing over at Yvette who shook her head.

“You two idiots can go to prison all by yourselves and I’ll get Peaches in the custody battle.”

“Traitor,” Rhys called over his shoulder as he walked away.

\--

Rhys had left lunch in a fairly good mood; his friends often had that effect on him (it was something he had forgotten while grinding his way through his old job). It wasn’t necessarily happiness, that required a more active emotion, but he was at least content as he pushed his cart through the 5E floor, the last place he had to clean before clocking out. He had visited this floor as a programmer since most of their formal meetings were held on 5E along with sales and marketing, future strategies, and real estate.

He went from room to room, some were more spacious but all had the same general layout. It made it easier for him to find the trashcan and recycle bins; some he had to spend extra time in because of the platters of food that had been left over. He was nearing the end of the hallway as he dipped into a fairly large meeting room that upon first inspection seemed just as empty as the previous.

He was pulling out the lining of the trashcan by the door when someone called out, “Uh, excuse me?”

Rhys dropped the bag in surprise, it sliding halfway back into the trashcan and half leaning out of it, filled to the brim. He looked up and found the voice belonged to a man fumbling with some cables that were fed into the podium.

“Err, sorry, I didn’t know anyone was still using this room. I can, uh, come back later,” normally Rhys wouldn’t give two shits if there was someone in the room, but the man was fairly attractive—okay, very attractive, so he tried to be polite.

He had pitch black hair that curled just above his shoulders, which would have been a little too long for Rhys’s tastes but it looked shiny and well taken care of where he just wanted to run his fingers through it. His eyes were a golden brown that was a few shades lighter than his skin tone, which fell straight into the caramel category.

The sheepish expression on his face was adorable. “Please, don’t. I kinda need some help if you’re not too busy,” he asked, running a nervous hand through his hair. He stood up from where he was crouched among the wires; his body was thin, lean, and long.

He’s taller than me, Rhys thought and then realized that while he was checking out the man he had been waiting for a response. Rhys practically stumbled to get around his cart, “Of course, yeah, sure, of course. What—what do you need help with?”

“I can’t seem to find the AUX cord,” He weakly laughed, gesturing to the mess of cables he had exposed in his search.

Rhys spotted it instantly: all AUX cords were color-coded to purple, but the man looked prettier up close and Rhys decided to drag this encounter out as long as possible. “Well, I guess I could take a look, maybe a new set of eyes will help,” he pulled out his best smile (the one he practiced in the mirror throughout university) and watched the guy blush.

Rhys stepped towards the cables and crouched down, pretending to be engrossed in the task. The man either knew he wasn’t going to be a help or didn’t want to awkwardly crowd Rhys, because he stayed standing next to the podium. “There are certainly a lot of cables here,” Rhys commented to fill the silence.

The man laughed, “Yeah, I’ve been here for five years now and every meeting room is wired just differently enough to be confusing.”

“Oh, what department are you in?”

“Future Strategies,” his voice was light, but carried a good bass to it—Rhys decided that he like it. “What about you?”

Rhys turned at glanced down at his uniform, making the other man turned a light shade of pink. “Uh, that was a stupid question, sorry. Haha, please pretend I didn’t ask that.”

Rhys waved it off and finally grabbed the purple cord, unplugging it from the wall. He stood and stepped a little closer than necessary to hand the cord to the other man. “Here you go; your AUX cord.”

“Thanks,” the man smiled, his fingers brushing Rhys’s as he took it. He opened his mouth to say something else but it was lost as the trash bag that had been hanging halfway out of the bin finally tipped and fell to the floor, scattering a day’s whole of trash across the ground.

Rhys cursed and hurried over, picking up anything potentially filled with liquid first to limit the amount of stains he would have to rub out later. He tossed those items into the large trash attached to the cart as quickly as he could not even having a chance to put on gloves and getting whatever substance had been mixed in on his hands.

He grimaced. There goes my chance with the hot guy, he thought to himself, nothing’s more attractive than picking up trash with my bare hands.

And just as that thought rolled through his head, did he feel an extra presence bend down next to him and a darker hand reach into his field of view, grabbing a bottle and tossing it overhead into his cart. Rhys stopped what he was going and looked incredulously as the guy calmly helped him clean the floor in his nice (re: expensive) business suit.

Without thinking about it, Rhys grabbed the man’s wrist to stop him. “You really don’t have to.”

The man didn’t bother pulling out of Rhys’s grip, simply continuing the task with his free hand. “You helped me, I’m just returning the favor.”

“There’s a big difference between finding a cable and picking up crap from the floor; really it’s my job…now,” Rhys snorted, paused and then added, “And I’d rather save that favor for something better.”

This did make the man stop and tilt his head to quirk an eyebrow at Rhys. “Oh, what were you thinking?”

Rhys, dragged his hand off of the man’s wrist and pretended to think about before replying, “Dinner?”

“On one condition,” He answered, tossing a takeout bag into the trash. “You tell me your name.”

He smiled, “It’s Rhys.”

“Darren,” he replied with a grin.

It was at this point that Rhys finally moved passed the fourth stage, apathy, and into the fifth stage, of tentative acceptance—this whole janitorial thing wasn’t turning out half bad.

\--

The rest of the week had passed in an excited blur. After they had exchanged numbers to their personal ECHO communicators, Darren left and Rhys went through the rest of his shift with a stupid smile on his face. It had been ages since he had been on a proper date (falling into bed with the last person he had danced with at the club did not count) and he was looking forward to it. Now, that he was no longer stuck making sure that the Programming Department was functioning and no one was relying on him to do well, it had freed up his time to actually live.

He couldn’t believe that there was a point in life not long ago that he had almost died twice within the span of a few hours.

And now, he was a janitor who had scored a date with a really, really attractive man. That point could not be emphasized enough, which Vaughn had an intimate experience with as Rhys had gushed about Darren’s hotness all week leading up to the date on Friday night. It was an effect of this that had Vaughn suffering even now.

“Does this look okay or do I look like I’m trying too hard?”

Rhys asked for the nth time on yet another outfit. Vaughn was all about his bro going out there and getting some, but there were only so many times he could be asked about a shirt that he lost it.

The shorter man threw an arm over the back of the couch to check out yet another change of clothes, “Dude, you looked fine in the last eight outfits. Just put on your tightest pants and go smile at him, it worked for every other single date you’ve been on, seriously.”

Rhys sighed in exasperation, tugging off the shirt he was currently wearing and throwing it to the ground. “I know; I know, but like that Rhys before was going places: he was an associate programmer, but now I’m just Rhys the janitor without any future prospects. I gotta put in more effort to make up for my exceedingly lame life.”

Vaughn echoed Rhys’s sigh from earlier and with the beer bottle in his other hand gestured for his roommate to bring out another outfit. He had treated Rhys the same way he had been for years, but the past few weeks had him feeling really bad for the younger man and he hoped that maybe something as simple as having someone else to focus on like a boyfriend, would pull him out of this funk.

He also just wanted his best friend to be happy.

Rhys stepped back out wearing a shirt with the loudest print Vaughn had ever seen in his life. He took one glance at it and vehemently expressed how much he hated it and that Rhys should burn the shirt as soon as possible adding, “Where did you even find that? Did you time travel?”

“I like this shirt,” he grumbled, but tugged it off anyways and went back for another.

An hour later, they had settled on a pair of light washed jeans (the ones lifted Rhys’s butt just so), a burgundy shirt with the sleeves rolled, messily up to his elbow, and a pair of simple black boots. He tossed a black jean jacket over it just to dress it a bit, but made sure the collar was low enough to show the abstract tattoo on his neck.

Vaughn nodded his approval, “You’re definitely getting laid tonight.”

“God, I hope so,” Rhys muttered, squatting by the front door to loosen up the pants. “I don’t cut off the circulation in my legs just for fun.”

“Good luck,” Vaughn shouted as Rhys lifted from his squat and headed out the door; he threw a wave as it closed with his friend’s voice following him, “and use protection!”

He slipped his ECHO out from his back pocket as he waited for the elevator—he had a good ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Darren at a restaurant called The Clove. It was located on the 11W floor where most of the mid-range food places were located, meaning they were going to sit and get table service but were not willing to spend money on having golden silverware to eat lobster (those restaurants were located on the 14th floor).

The other people in the elevator were in similar dressed states as himself; all celebrating the start of the weekend with a night out. It had been particularly crowded lately because of the travel ban that Handsome Jack still had enforced since the shooter hadn’t been captured, keeping the people that usually left Helios on the weekend trapped on the station. Every once and while Rhys felt partially responsible for that, but he figured he had at least tried to stop him, and then was strangled by his crazy partner—he had served his time and it was up to other people like Lisa to actually bring the guy in.

The elevator dinged announcing its arrival on the eleventh floor and Rhys stepped out with another woman who was busy texting on her ECHO to pay him any attention.

The map had helpfully directed Rhys right for the entrance to The Clove, which was only a few yards away from where the elevator dropped him off. Rhys had never been to this particular place, but was unsurprised to find it pretty packed. The lighting was dim enough to add an air of intimacy and most of the tables had been replaced by booths allowing for a little more privacy than other restaurants—Rhys was impressed and was looking at Darren in a new light.

“Have you been?” The man Rhys was just thinking about asked from over his shoulder.

Rhys turned to get a good look. He was dressed well: dark slacks, a short-sleeve shirt and he had his hair slicked back so that Rhys could get a clear look at his face—it was a nice face. “I haven’t, but I like your taste.”

“In the restaurant or my clothes?”

“Both,” Rhys smirked.

Darren’s look was filled with a little more heat than it had been before, “You don’t look so bad yourself that jumpsuit hid a lot of, uh, features.”

“Oh, like what?” He fished.

The blush was back and it looked even prettier up close, Rhys realized. “Um, I—I’m trying really hard to say something gentlemanly right now…”

That was answer enough. Rhys laughed, patting the man on the arm before slipping his own through it in one smooth motion. “I’ll give you an out, but I might not be so generous next time,” he joked, looking slightly upwards at the taller man.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Darren said before leading Rhys into The Clove.

He had made a reservation apparently, which Rhys found oddly charming and they were led by a waitress to a booth pushed against the far right side of the establishment. After handing them menus, she told them their waiter would be with them shortly and walked away.

“She was oddly polite for a Hyperion employee,” Rhys commented before thinking.

Thankfully, the man laughed. “I bet that you must dislike a majority of people on this station after having to clean up after them.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Rhys agreed. He thought for a second about telling him the truth, but it was little bit of a heavy story to bring in a first date—he’d save the whole demotion thing for the second date (if there was one).

They both took a moment to glance through the menu. It was standard and Rhys had his dish picked out within a minute along with the decision to start drinking some heavy liquor because he wanted to have some fun. It allowed him to watch as Darren carefully studied each option, his brows furrowed in concentration; he had never seen someone so focused on a food choice before.

“You need some help?”

“No, I think I got it,” Darren chuckled, still looking through the laminated menu. “I just, I’m not really from around here, so the food sometimes gives me pause even after living here for a few years.”

“Like you’re not from this system?” Rhys wondered.

“No, more like I’m not from this galaxy,” He answered hesitantly.

The younger man found his eyebrows raise in surprise, “Really? You traveled across a galaxy to work at Helios? Did they offer to pay you in gold or something?”

“Nope,” he snorted. “I don’t even have a good retirement plan. I just wanted to experience something different, so I applied for a job here after having Hyperion visit my University’s campus on those boring career days where they set up all those booths and stuff.”

“You actually went to those?”

“I taking that you didn’t?”

“Naw, shit’s lame,” Rhys smiled to make sure Darren knew he was joking. The real reason he didn’t go to those was much more complicated and just with the question about his current job, he decided that a white lie was easier than the truth.

Darren had closed the menu by this point and leaned into his elbows over the table, “Are you worried you’ve gone a date with a nerd, now?”

“Who said I wasn’t a nerd?”

Their banter was interrupted by the waiter coming by and taking their drink orders: a jack and coke for Darren and a gin and tonic for Rhys. He left with a promise to return with their drinks and then take then dinner orders.

\--

They never got a chance to eat their food.

Because at some point Darren had ran a foot up Rhys’s calf, which led to Rhys incrementally sliding across the booth so that they sat side by side. This led to flirty touches until one of them (Rhys doesn’t remember who) suggested that they both check out the restroom.

Which is how Rhys found himself crashing backwards into a stall, his fingers dug into the front of Darren’s shirt, dragging him forwards while making sure to keep their lips attached. Darren did an amicable job of kissing Rhys senseless while shutting and locking the stall door behind them—Rhys rewarded him with a sharp bite to his bottom lip and a tongue in his mouth. After that, there were hands crawling up from the bottom of Rhys’s shirt to dance along his sides just this side of tickling. Rhys went in the opposite direction and slid a hand downwards to skim at the edge of where Darren’s skin met the top of his slacks before slipping underneath.

The taller man let out a groan and then Rhys was being spun and pushed against the stall door, which shook from the fairly weak pressure. Rhys dragged his lips away from Darren’s mouth and trailed them down his neck with the destination of collarbones in mind, delivering a sharp bite to the prominent bone before Darren eased him away so that he could peel off his denim jacket. Rhys attempted to help by rolling his shoulders back but it just turned into a weird wiggle movement that led to part of the fabric getting pinched in the metal plates of his cybernetic arm.

Rhys cursed.

Darren laughed.

Rhys had to turn away from warm skin, needing his eyes to get the jacket free. It probably only took a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity before the jacket was tossed aside and Darren latched onto the open skin on Rhys’s neck like a really attractive leech. With each tight suction that was followed by a swipe of tongue, Rhys became more desperate; fingers struggling to unbutton Darren’s pants. The other man had moved back to capture Rhys’s lips in a kiss that probably looked very gross from the outside, but felt amazing when Rhys had finally unzipped his pants and shoved a hand in without preamble.

Darren puffed out a hot breath as his hips rolled into the sensation, and Rhys tried to remember the best of his old techniques (it been awhile since he had hooked up with a guy). Darren seemed to be enjoying it well enough, but a few minutes later decided to one-up Rhys by dropping to his knees. His hands spent a little more time than necessary undoing Rhys’s pants, stopping to touch and caress.

Rhys breathed out a curse.

Darren furrowed his eyebrows in a similar manner to when he was intently studying the menu, which Rhys thought was fucking adorable before leaning in and wrapping his mouth around him. Rhys’s head tilted back and hit the stall and let the rush of endorphins carry him through waves of pleasure as Darren sucked and bobbed.

It allowed his mind to drift. Distantly, he realized it had been months since someone had touched him and even longer since he allowed himself to spend time and enjoy it rather than focusing on simply getting off as quickly as possible. The last time he had a triste in a bathroom stall was back in university and that was usually with girls (because their bathrooms were like ten times cleaner); luckily, most places on Helios were scrubbed to perfection—Rhys would know.

And now that Rhys was intimately aware of what he had been missing as Darren did something with his tongue that had Rhys throwing out a hand against the wall to hold up his weak legs, he wasn’t going to forget anytime soon.

If this is what almost dying and getting demoted had led to, then maybe his life wasn’t that bad. Darren was sweet, the date went well enough, and Rhys could see himself spending more time with him. That was probably the best part of all of this: finding someone new to fold into his life while also bringing the promise of something more. He had spent the last couple weeks of his life just existing in a perpetual state of apathy between having his career pulled out from under feet and the realization that his existence was minimal and forgettable— _You don’t belong here_.

The complete opposite of the want that was curling through his veins now.

Rhys dug his fingers into the soft strands of Darren’s hair as a warning that he couldn’t find himself to voice. The other man got the hint and redoubled his efforts, which had Rhys unable to contain to the loud moan that rolled up through his chest.

And then a couple of things happened all at once.

A patron walked into the bathroom so Rhys was forced to shove his flesh hand into his mouth, biting down on the meatiest part to muffle any noise, because the door opened just as the electricity and warmth of his release spread through his body. It was also at this moment when Rhys’s eyes drifted downwards to watch as the taller man swallowed around him that Darren was replaced by someone else with brown hair and mixed eyes, leading to Rhys coming with another person’s name on his lips.

Rhys didn’t have time to even begin processing the series of realizations that flashed through his mind, because Darren was crowding him against the door with a tinted kiss. Rhys had just enough space left in his racing thoughts to wrap his hand around the other man and stroke him until he shook apart; biting down on Rhys’s shoulder so as to make sure the person washing their hands didn’t hear.

The high slowly left his system and he was left panting and horrified as he stared with widening eyes at the brown back wall. Darren was mumbling something into his neck and the door was shutting with a firm click signaling the departure of the other person, and all Rhys could think was—Oh, fuck—on a loop.

“—should leave,” Rhys’s brain translated once he was able to process what Darren was saying.

He nodded numbly.

“I’ll—go out first. I, uh, left something at the table,” Rhys lied, needing a moment to think without being surrounded by the smell and heat of Darren.

Darren gave him a quick press of lips over his tattoo. “ 'K, I’ll pay for our drinks and then we can go,” he planned with a small smile.

Rhys did up his pants with shaking hands that had nothing to do with the act and everything to do with his unconscious coming up and smacking him in the face at the most inopportune time. He stumbled backwards out of the stall and with wobbly legs, raced out of the bathroom in way that he hoped didn’t appear as desperate as he felt. He didn’t have any other plan in his mind than ‘leave’, so without thinking he headed towards the exit, hoping the bright lights and clearer air would help center his thoughts and lead him to some conclusion that this wasn’t as big of a deal as he was making it out to be.

The restaurant was just as crowded as when they ducked into the bathroom, which meant Rhys had to weave through people to get to the exit. There were a few couples loitering outside, probably waiting for a free table, but it was significantly less packed and Rhys was able to take a deep breath of light, cool air.

He leaned against a far wall facing The Clove and tried to get his thoughts in order:

First, he had screwed around in a stall like a teenager and enjoyed it--mental high five.

Second, he had pictured someone else when he came. Okay, this was something that people did all the time and yeah, it was pretty shitty and he was going to feel like a total dick about it tomorrow, but it wasn’t that strange.

Third, what was strange was who he had pictured. He knew objectively that the man was attractive the whole danger and power thing really did it for him, but he had never actually, you know, thought about it in any context other than a passing: oh, hey, he’s good-looking.

Fourth, did this actually mean anything?

Rhys didn’t get a chance to answer that fourth mental question because his eyes had been wandering as he went through his list of things to panic about and they caught a familiar profile, which had every part of Rhys stiffening.

He pushed himself off of the wall and leaned to get a better look, hoping his mind was just being overactive. But as he looked, there was the dawning dread that the person all the way at the other end of the hallway that he had seen, turned so Rhys could only see the side profile, was the man who had shot and tossed Rhys over the edge of a balcony into open space.

Just like that, Rhys tumbled back into the same headspace of a few weeks ago where his life was only defined by fight or flight.

He placed a hand over his racing heart and tried to think clearly. It was obvious the man hadn’t noticed Rhys yet and that he was trying to blend in from the way he was casually leaning against a wall, wearing a set of normal clothes, and looking through his ECHO communicator. Rhys glanced up at the cameras on the way and wondered if anyone had spotted him yet, but then he remembered that he had never given Jack a description of the shooter.

Rhys was the only one on Helios that knew what the assassin looked like.

He curled back against the wall, putting the curve of the hall between him and the shooter, hoping the man wouldn’t see him by accident, and thought.

Jack had made it pretty clear that he didn’t want him around. And Rhys had already decided that he had put enough of his life and time into this—his part was done. He was shot, thrown, and strangled for no other reason than he had gotten in between these psychos and Handsome Jack. He could just wait here until Darren came back and then they could go back to his place, make-out, and Rhys could forget about ever having seen the guy again.

Or he could get into the elevator next to him and go tell Jack.

He should just wait.

That was the best option.

Rhys looked into the restaurant and saw Darren’s tall frame over the crowd, leaned up against the bar paying for their drinks. Rhys turned to glance back down the hall and saw the shooter nod politely at a family that passed by him.

He hit the call elevator button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be 100% more Jack in the next chapter! Chapter title is a lyric from a Monsta X song that I can't remember the name of right now.


	7. Never Start (I know I won’t go)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! I was busy and I wanted to make sure to get this chapter right; a lot happens here and is going to start a transition into the next plot phase (it'll make sense eventually, I swear!). 
> 
> Thank you for all the amazing Kudos and comments!!! You guys are literally the best!!!!
> 
> Oh, and Happy Avengers: Endgame Day!

Rhys decided that the best place to find Jack was probably his office, so he headed towards the tenth floor, which was the one place he knew of that held the personal elevator that led up to the CEO’s office. As the elevator dinged through the floors, he sent a quick message through his ECHO about some emergency coming up to explain his absence to Darren and to hopefully not look like a complete asshole, but knowing that the minute he pressed that button he had burned that bridge.

He would feel bad about it later.

The elevator arrived and Rhys slipped through even before the doors had a chance to open all the way. He felt a ticking clock in the back of his mind as he hurried through the halls, weaving around people, which became more prevalent the closer to the bridge he got. This floor was filled with the more popular bars and clubs due to the view and was to be avoided during a Friday night. Rhys was at the point of actually pushing people out of the way by the time he crossed the bridge and reached the other side. The elevator was on the other side of a wall, tucked into a small space and was guarded by a loader bot.

Rhys attempted to simply go around, but the bot raised a large, metal yellow arm. “This is off limits to unauthorized personnel.”

“Come on; can’t you just let me up. I have important information,” Rhys whined and huffed out; he could feel his shirt was already slightly damp from the brief jog he did and he didn’t want to have put in all this effort for nothing.

“Negative,” the loader bot replied. “Begging will not change anything, please do not embarrass yourself,” the mechanical voice did nothing to hide the judging tone.

Rhys scowled. “Look, bot, I need to see Handsome Jack. You’ve met me before when I went up here with his assistant like three weeks ago. Remember? Employee-2246; that’s me. I’ll be real quick,” he tried to reason, stepping forward only to have the bot shove him backwards.

“Unauthorized personnel are not permitted to access Elevator-5 without permission from Handsome Jack,” the robot managed to sound annoyed as he stepped to the side and bodily blocked the elevator doors.

Rhys rubbed the spot where the loader bot had shoved him and let something akin to a growl in its direction. There must be a way to get around the stupid thing; he really didn’t have any other options—it’s not like he had any other way of contacting the man. For safety reasons, there had to be some sort of emergency stairwell that probably existed leading up his floor, but Rhys had no idea where one might be and he didn’t want to waste time trying to find one and have the shooter slip away.

If only he had stayed and listened to Jack that day—

A memory came to the forefront of Rhys’s mind. One that had happened after his knocked to his feet by a blast and was subsequently greeted by a loader bot of a similar make to the one standing in front of him now, leveling cannons in his face.

Rhys stared the bot and repeated the phrase Jack had flippantly said over his shoulder three weeks ago. “Override code-326B9,” he delivered as flatly as he could and hoped that the code wasn’t also tuned to match Jack’s voice in order to work.

The loader bot’s stance immediately transitioned from guarding to passive, powering down into an idle mode directly. Rhys smiled to himself only to realize that the bot was still physically blocking the elevator doors even though it was no longer actively trying to shoo Rhys away. This led to the young man having to reach around and hit the elevator button and then crawl underneath the bot’s legs in order to slip inside once the doors opened.

He popped up in the elevator and clicked the only flor option available, a happy little tune played through the speakers as it ascended as Rhys focused on trying to straighten out his appearance. He then got mad at himself for even caring what he looked like and, out of spite, ruffled up his hair just so he would look worse in Handsome Jack’s presence.

He skipped out a perfectly good date for this; the text he sent was so blatantly a lie that he would be surprised if Darren didn’t hunt him down tomorrow just to punch him in the face. He would do the same if their positions were switched.

The elevator doors opened to a site Rhys had only seen once before, but the view was just as impressive except he was a little bit more bitter about it this time (despite the fact that he wasn’t riddled with holes this second go-around). He gave a passing notice to the fact that the receptionist wasn’t present clearly marking that it was after hours and the weekend before he lightly jogged through the lobby and pushed open the double doors to the inner office.

The space was big enough that he had to cover half the distance until he was even able to determine that Jack was in fact in his office posted up in a chair behind the massive desk with his legs kicked up. As Rhys approached, the CEO calmly looked up from a report he held in his hands.

If he was surprised to see Rhys, he didn’t show it. “How’d you sneak in here? I purposefully have a personal elevator just to keep the rats at bay.”

Rhys had met Handsome Jack a total of three times: the first was when he was high, the second when he was injured and pissed, and now a third when he is still pissed, no longer injured, and kind of over the whole cowering in the face of infamy thing.

“You use universal override codes on your loader bots,” Rhys replied stepping up onto the raised platform. His swagger lasted up until that point when he realized there was no place to sit and he was forced to awkwardly stand in front of the desk, which was too low to rest his hands on. “It’s kinda tacky.”

“And you know all about class, don’t you sweetheart?” came the heavy-handed sarcasm. “Didn’t you say something about not wanting to see me again or am I misremembering that?”

The fact that Jack had phrased it so Rhys’s statement of wanting to go home as a type of personal attack against Jack himself did not go unnoticed—he decided to keep that knowledge in his back pocket and just skip to the important information.

“I just saw your assassin on the 11th floor, west side; thought you might like to know that,” He said.

Instead of responding, Jack answered in movement, tossing the report on his desk, folding his legs back to the floor, and pulling up a holographic screen that projected camera feeds from all over Helios. He muttered something under his breath and Rhys thought he heard the word Tim, but then he turned away from the holographic screen and gave Rhys a once over, grinning sharp and dangerous after gathering the necessary facts.

“And you stopped your overly friendly date with what I can only assume to be an octopus judging from those marks, to come see little old me?” He leaned conspiratorially, “was the sex that bad?”

Rhys felt a tick begin in his jaw and resisted the urge to cover up the love bites with his hand. “The sex was fine, thanks for asking. And the date was over—I figured that since I’m such a nice person I would come and help you do your job,” he lashed out.

“That’s cute, kitten,” the words were light, but his gaze turned an edge sharper than before. “Real cute that you think I don’t know where this guy is 24/7. Don’t forget that I own every slate, slab, and wire in this space station and nothing—nothing—happens on here without my knowledge.”

“Then why haven’t—”

“Why haven’t I captured him? Oh, I don’t know: how about I wanted to find if he had other scum working with him before I carved out his eyeballs with a spoon,” Jack said with a roll of his eyes. “Seriously, am I the only person with brains in this fucking galaxy?”

And there was the burning humiliation Rhys had felt only in Jack’s presence. Even as working as a janitor and having people literally throw trash at him (seriously, Hyperion employees were terrible human beings), did not bring this level of full body trauma that one minute in Handsome Jack’s company did. It didn’t matter how much he was able to talk back, Jack was still superior and Rhys wanted to strangle him for it.

And your dick wants to sleep with him, his brain helpfully supplied. What does that say about you?

“Well, I guess the next time I see someone trying to shoot you I’ll let them since it’s probably part of your big plan,” he replied pithily, ignoring the voice in his head and choosing instead to keep his anger close.

“I did get shot, though,” The CEO said and then added, “But that notwithstanding, I’ve already thanked you for your service and even granted you a reward; what more do you want?”

Rhys crossed his arms over his chest and decided that if he came all the way up here to be judged and humiliated then he was going to at least leave with something. “I’ve been thinking about it and I think that you letting me have my own arm back is not a reward,” Rhys lied, not having thought about the reward at all, but knowing this was probably the only way to keep Jack’s attention.

Jack lazily spun in his chair. “Oh, have you?”

“Yeah, so I want something else,” the younger man delivered the words in the haughtiest voice he could summon.

Jack’s spin stopped facing Rhys, placing his palms on the desk, and he stood. “I didn’t peg you as a gold-digger—you’re too much of a twink to pull that off effectively, but I am interested now: what do you think you deserve?”

“I don’t know: how much is your life worth?” He snapped back.

Jack laughed and gracefully hoped over the desk. The elimination of a barrier between them had Rhys very much on edge, much more than he had been before. “It’s worth quite a lot, pumpkin. Much more than yours, which is why I’m having the thought that it would be much easier for me to simply chuck you out the nearest airlock,” his mused, weaving a hand up Rhys’s cybernetic arm to grip and turn him 90 degrees. “Oh, look there’s one right there,” he whispered it like a love note into Rhys’s ear.

Apparently, getting off had the added effect of making Rhys fearless, which is the only explanation for his next statement. Instead of pushing away, Rhys leaned into Jack’s presence, keeping his eyes forward on the airlock and hovering his cheek millimeters away from Jack’s lips.

“Your threats are only effective if you follow through,” he sing-songed, keeping the same low tone that Jack had set. “And so far you’ve threatened me several times and yet, I’m still breathing.”

Jack’s hand tightened around the metal plates. “You sound disappointed. Is this what your whole plan has been about: getting big and powerful Handsome Jack to kill you just so, at the final seconds of your boring life, you’ll finally be noticed by someone important?”

Even though it wasn’t true, the statement was harsh and Rhys couldn’t help but be affected by it. He couldn’t even think of a response that wouldn’t make him look worse or more pathetic than Jack had already seen him as—

You don’t belong here—or maybe it was true? Not the death thing, but maybe he had wanted recognition and once had spent time under the shadow that Jack had cast that was enough of a rush to fuel his need for more. Was he really just like all those other power hungry executives that licked the ground Handsome Jack walked on in the hopes of being even a little bit like the man?

“Have I touched a nerve, kid?”

Yes, he had, but Rhys wasn’t going to admit that. It would be the equivalent of holding his neck out to a crocodile and hoping it didn’t bite it. “No, I was just imagining how big of a mansion I should ask for: maybe one on Brevis-4 in view of those purple waterfalls?”

“That’d be a mistake, the people that inhabit that planet are absolute assholes,” he answered, letting his hand travel up to lightly grip Rhys’s nape; strong enough to be felt but not enough to hurt. The younger man tensed, but it was nothing compared to the next second when the hand moved to dig painfully dig fingers into one of the love bites hovering over his tattoo. It made his teeth clench and knees weak through the sudden sting and rush of something close to pleasure (which would be something he would unpack later). “And I already own all the land near those waterfalls.”

Rhys couldn’t physically affect Jack from this position, couldn’t even really see the man so all he had to push back was his words and he embraced that. “Fine, I’ll just take Hyperion then.”

Another grip into his neck and dark laughter followed. “Then you should’ve let the bandit take the shot,” Jack breathed against the side of his face. “That’s what anyone smart would’ve done,” he said, his fingers releasing the grip and turning it into something closer to a caress.

That’s when Rhys decided he had enough and pulled away from the touch, and Jack lets him. He takes two steps to distance himself from the CEO and turns to finally see Jack’s face, which had been hidden from him during this entire exchange.

It doesn’t help. His face is literally a mask and that calm, cocky persona that Handsome Jack carries is fully in place across the sharp features of his face. Rhys is kind of starting to hate it. He liked it, envied the casualness of it when that man was just a 2D picture on a poster, but having to interact with someone who was always guarded was frustrating—all he wanted to do was make the other man express an emotion, and that was not a healthy reaction, because at this point Rhys was willing to do anything to ruffle him.

“Yeah, well, you can’t expect much from a janitor,” he replied before thinking.

And there was that change of expression he was hoping for as Jack displayed genuine confusion, “What?”

Well, he was stuck telling the story now, because if he really thought about it, Jack had already humiliated him enough, admitting to being a janitor was only going to be another nail in his pre-built coffin. If he was going to embarrass himself: go big or go home.

So, it was neither fortunate nor unfortunate that in the next moment, Rhys’s eyes happened to drift upwards, looking for inspiration so as to tell the story of his demotion without seeming like a total loser, which brought his gaze on the floor to ceiling window back dropping the office. It was a very pretty view of Elpis with the purples and blues blending into the blackness of space, casting a dark aura into the place like a bad omen.

However, this was completely overshadowed by a person who happened to be floating right outside the window. Rhys didn’t have time to make any details other than that they were crawling along the outside of the glass and they had several grenades tied to their body.

“DEATH TO THE KEEPER OF THE KEY!” came the scream, muffled through the glass.

Rhys unconsciously reached for the nearest object, which happened to be Jack and tugged them backwards. Jack was in the process of turning around to see who yelled, when a cold, metal hand wrapped around his forearm and tipped him forward, just as the explosion ripped through the office throwing them halfway across the room and harshly onto the floor.

The screech and crack of glass shattering filled the silence of the room as well as the ripping of metal and wood as it tore through the floor and furniture. Rhys had used his free hand to uselessly cover his head after his body hit and skidded across the marble floor, his cybernetic arm had let go of Jack and was digging into the ground beneath. His fingers broke through the marble and caught, jerking his body to a stop and almost spinning him in a 180 degree turn from the force and sudden halt of momentum.

Unlike the explosion that had come from the strange siren powered grenade, this one was standard and brought with it intense heat and smoke. The air burned as he sucked in the breath that had been knocked from his body, leading to him hack as he curled further into himself in instinct to shield as much of his body as he could from the falling rubble and debris.

“What the ever-loving fuck?” Jack’s hoarse voice filtered out from somewhere to Rhys’s right and the younger man felt laughter bubble up through the coughing.

It probably only took a few minutes for everything to settle, allowing him to hear the alarm going off—a second later the sprinkler system kicked in. By the time Rhys struggled to his feet he was well and fully drenched, which made him more miserable and less thankful for the fires it had put out.

“Why is this water pressure so strong?!” Rhys complained.

“I upgraded it a few years ago when I was bored!” Jack shouted back and Rhys followed the sound until he saw the man stepping around a toppled statue. “I might’ve also been drunk!”

It was like walking through a rainstorm; Rhys had to hold up a hand to shield his face from the water. He walked forward half-blind, wanting for some reason to see the damage it had caused first hand. He had figured that the danger had passed since the person who had set off the grenades was most likely very dead. That was confirmed as soon as Rhys hit the spot where the desk used to be and saw bits of a torso and a stray arm.

Rhys held in the gag, turning away from the carnage and seeing the large, empty space where the window used to be. The force had not only shattered the glass but caused the rest to form cracks like spider webs across the piece that was left.

“Fucking idiot,” Jack hissed, kicking a leg torn at the kneecap across the remains of his office and into space. “Didn’t even make a big enough explosion to break the outer shield; god, these people have no follow-thru when trying to kill me. It’s just embarrassing.”

He was right, Rhys could still see the massive, outside shield shimmering, which was obvious now that he thought about it: if that had broken, they would both be dead, having been sucked out into the cold vacuum of space in an instant. So, all the person had done was ruin the view Handsome Jack had of Elpis and majorly fucked-up his desk.

The laughter began to tear up through his lungs; he slapped a hand over his lips, but it was too late. It was violent, causing him to bend at the waist and tears to form in the corners of his eyes. It was hysterical and Rhys had no idea what he was laughing at, but that just made it even funnier.

“God…this…” he tried to speak, but most of his breath was taken by the laughs. He gestured wildly towards where he thought Jack was, which could have a call for help or a grab for attention; he wasn’t sure. “This—stupid…what an unb—believable loser—” He chocked out, sucking in breaths in between the bursts of stomach-aching laughter.

Distantly, he thought that he might be having a mental breakdown.

Maybe almost dying three times within a single month was leading to permanent brain damage or at least a really bad case of PTSD.

Through his tears, he saw Jack making his way through the remains of his office. “I’m glad you find this so entertaining,” he grumbled, picking up any salvageable tech. “But that desk was made of imported wood and it was a pain in the ass to get it here. Now, I’m going to have to get a new one…” he trailed off, muttering the rest of his grievances in a list.

Rhys managed to at least suppress the laughter into giggles and was now able to stand up straight with his torso burning from the muscle spasms. He wiped the tears away from his eyes, trying to clear his vision enough to see Jack moving around in front of him. The sprinklers had turned off at some point, but the damage was already done as every piece of his clothing stuck, uncomfortably to him. It was annoying that Jack had been hit with the same torrential downpour as himself, but where he looked like he walked off of a photoshoot, Rhys felt like a drowned rat.

He watched as the older man picked up random items to either pocket or toss them out of the giant hole in the glass and float them out into space (normal Hyperion workers would get at least a thousand dollar fine for littering like that). He had a brief moment to wonder what Jack could possibly find useful enough to keep out of this mess and be infinitely curious about what those items were.

The water soaked into his shirt was now starting to seep into the skin and bone underneath now that the constant fall of the sprinklers had stopped and all that was left was the cold, manufactured air. The laughter had kept warm enough, but his body was no longer moving and the shivers started. Rhys crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to keep in some warmth just as Jack turned to face him, surrounded by rubble.

Rhys could not interpret the look that he was given, but it was lingering. “You’re a little bit more unstable than I thought, princess,” he smirked, wickedly. “You should take that as a compliment.”

The praise was just as unsettling as the judgement in that Rhys had still no idea how to react. “Thanks?” He then struggled to find something else to say to fill the silence as Handsome Jack’s eyes remained on him. “Where’s, uh, where’s your security?”

After he asked it, he realized that it was strange they hadn’t shown up yet. He would think that the security assigned to Handsome Jack would be a little bit more proactive than the normal guards who’s personal code was ‘take care of it yourselves and don’t talk to me.’ The bots were worse—Vaughn had been kicked by at least three because he happened to be in their path.

“Ah, well, I recently changed the structure of that whole department. And by that, I mean that I fired a bunch of them because they sucked and then I put someone competent in charge that scary, ex-military lady…” he snapped his fingers trying to force out the name, “Lisa! That’s her name—who’s whipping the remaining ones into shape, and running her own investigation that doesn’t involve answering calls for ruined desks and windows,” he gestured towards the state of the room.

Rhys nodded. “More of an emergency for the Reconstruction Department,” he said and seeing a couple of fingers laying at his feet added, “And Biohazard.”

Jack shrugged in a manner of a man who knew that he was going to have to make a series of calls with people he didn’t want to talk to, but resigned in having to do it, and then finally stepped away from the destroyed platform that used to hold his desk and passed Rhys.

“Come on, kid. The longer I’m here, the more pissed off I’m becoming,” he said in a thinly veiled demand to follow.

That statement had the effect of reminding Rhys that was a world outside of this office and that came with the remembrance of Darren. He cringed, turning on his heel while pulling out his ECHO, hoping it was soaked or ruined beyond repair, but he only had the chance to see he had three missed texts before a sharp pain in his leg had the device slipping through his frozen fingers. It was so unexpected that he didn’t have a chance to muffle the hiss, his metal hand clamping over the top of his thigh in reaction to the sudden sting.

He pulled his hand away and found blood, which made sense when he then actually looked at his leg and saw a piece of something sticking two inches out from his thigh. “Huh,” he voiced.

He hadn’t even realized Jack had stopped until his shadow darkened the wound that Rhys had bent to look at. “I think that’s a piece of my desk,” he guessed.

“Do you think imported wood is less infectious?”

Jack hummed in thought. “Good idea, pumpkin,” he said and Rhys was about to ask what he meant by that but his words were bit off into a yelp as Jack grabbed the piece of wood and yanked it out of his thigh.

“What the hell?!” He screeched, slamming a hand over the now actively bleeding wound.

Jack tossed the wood over his shoulder. “It was probably filled with bacteria; I figured you didn’t want a matching cybernetic leg to go with your arm,” he smirked.

Rhys looked back and forth from him to his wound with incredulousness, but again Jack somehow halts the words Rhys is about to speak before he can say them as he wraps a hand around his metal arm and then drags him across the floor. Rhys has to awkwardly shuffle as he tries to keep his other hand pressed down on the wound while still walking to keep up with the insistent pull. He doesn’t bother asking where they’re going, because it really doesn’t matter, he knows at this point Jack isn’t going to murder him.

(Well, he doesn’t know that for sure, but he figures he’d at least see it coming now).

Rhys had forgotten how dark it was in the office but is quickly reminded as Jack pushed through into the waiting room and he is blinded by the bright, glaring lights. He had no free hand to shield his eyes and is forced to squint as Jack led him across the room and pushed him to sit on a low table. His pants made a wet squelch as he lowered his weight onto the wood and the blood from the wound began to seep sideways down the side of his leg.

Jack returned with a first aid kit, which he tossed to Rhys without warning. The younger man only managed to catch it because of his cybernetic arm. “I have Halley keep this behind her desk for lame regulation purposes,” he explained.

“I don’t know how to use stitches,” Rhys declared, rifling through the various medical supplies in the box set on his lap.

Jack rolled his eyes and was then bending down in front of Rhys, tugging the kit out of his hands and setting it on the ground. The action shocked Rhys into a short stupor—it was a sight so foreign that his brain was having a difficult time even processing what was happening. For a beat, his entire world view narrowed to Jack, his head angled downwards, his jacket torn around his left elbow as he reached for something, his hair wet and slicked back, and the edges of his mask glinting under the artificial lights.

The moment broke as cool metal touched his skin and jerked away only to be held down by a firm hand splayed on top of his knee. He pulled his attention down towards the wound where Jack was cutting through his jeans with a pair of scissors, brushing against the skin beneath. He cut a sizable square out, revealing the wound from tip to edge and then tossed the re-stained material on the ground.

“This,” he said, exchanging the pair of scissors, “is disinfectant.”

“I know what—ow! Fuck,” he hissed as Jack roughly cleaned the wound without warning. He clenched his fists around the edge of the table, trying to hold his body still to get it over quicker.

Jack didn’t bother to look up, focused on the task before tossing the used cloth to the side with the pieces of the jeans. He reached back into the kit, grabbing two more items and holding them up to show Rhys. “This is a needle and a thread, the thread goes through the needle and then the needle goes through your skin—it’s not rocket science, princess.”

Rhys gritted his teeth, “Just had to throw in that insult, didn’t you?”

Jack grinned wide and sharp, “Can’t have you getting too comfortable.”

And then he slid the needle through the angry skin of the gouge and Rhys breathed in harshly through his nose, which didn’t stop him from muttering out, “Bastard.” Without having to ask, Rhys kept his eyes on the process, following the weaving motion as Jack sutured his skin back together with an expertise that spoke of experience. This didn’t stop him from noticing that Jack’s skin was a couple of shades darker than his own and was warm even though he had gotten just as wet and cold from the sprinklers; the heat radiated outwards from where the tips of Jack’s fingers brushed over the pale skin of his thigh.

In a reverse from earlier, he was reminded of Darren and Rhys wondered if he wasn’t just as uselessly destructive as the suicide bomber.

All the sudden, the situation wasn’t as fun or comfortable anymore. He could feel the hot pain of the wound, the sting of the needle, the numbing cold of his skin, the wet cling of his clothes, and the cold seeping into his bones, making him shiver uncontrollably. It was like waking up from a dream and being plunged back into reality: he had hurt someone today and then watched another one die.

Rhys had shrugged both of them off, one of them he even laughed about.

It was easy to do at the time, but just like a high, the drugs eventually faded and all he was left with was a headache, a sore body, and a bad taste in his mouth. He had experienced it enough in his university days and was intimately aware of what royally fucking up felt like the day after: a bitter cocktail of self-loathing, guilt, remorse, and the acceptance that he was going to do the same the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that…

It was Jack leaning down and biting off the thread that had Rhys escaping his memories and moving back into the present. The action was quick and efficient but seemed a bit unnecessary given that he clearly had scissors. It led to him pausing, his face still hovering over Rhys’s thigh and his gaze drifting upwards to stare at the younger man—he wondered if Jack could sense the change in his mood because his masked face wasn’t as loose (open?) as it had seemed before. There was a solid guard up and Rhys was back to looking at Handsome Jack, the CEO of Hyperion.

“All done, cupcake,” he gave his leg a pat right over the wound, one last touch and one last strike of pain before he stood up and broke the connection.

Rhys nodded and limped up to his feet, checking to see how much weight and pressure he place on his leg. The answer was a good amount, but his mobility was limited if he wanted to keep the stitches from tearing. The effects of the day that had rushed upon him were now settling in and he was suddenly extremely tired, wanting nothing more than to crawl into his bed and not leave.

There seemed to be a similar pattern of events when it came to associating with Handsome Jack.

“I assume you don’t need help finding your way back to your hovel?” He asked rhetorically, typing into an ECHO that he had pulled out from one of the drawers in Halley’s reception desk.

Rhys shook his head, keeping his gaze on the ground as he turned and headed for the elevator. He wondered if every interaction with Jack was going to end with the man getting tired of him and kicking him to the curb like a dog desperate for attention. He felt tears of frustration sting at the corner of his eyes and he was starting to figure out it hurt so much:

Because it felt an awful lot like rejection.

\--

Rhys was awoken the next day by a weight dipping his bed to the left. He rolled over and the saw the blurry form of Yvette perched at the corner of his bed dressed in a casual pair of jeans and a tank top. Her hair was unstyled, swept up in a bun on the top of her head and she was sending him a look similar to how one would look at a small, injured woodland creature: pitying and yet, accepting.

“There is a worrying pattern of self-destructive behavior that’s forming, Rhys,” she worriedly judged, resting her weight on her right arm so she could lean towards him, giving him no room to escape.

Rhys tossed an arm over his eyes to block out the feeling of being awake, and responded in a voice rough from sleep, “You should’ve seen me in college.”

“Oh good, it’s a character trait then,” Yvette said sarcastically and physically pulled Rhys’s arm away from his face, forcing him to look at her through squinted eyes.

“You’re going to be a very effective mother,” he admitted already cowing under her gaze.

“I’d better be after raising you two idiots,” she smiled before shifting back into serious. “Vaughn told me you came back home soaked and bleeding.”

“It was a wild Frid—ow!”

She smacked his bare chest with a solid thwack. He rubbed the spot and glared at her, deciding that it would be a good idea to sit up so he wasn’t such an easy target. It made him taller than her, but that did nothing to lessen the penetrating ability of her eyes as she looked over his, no doubt bruised, body exposed by the falling covers as he leaned against the backboard.

Her hand twitched forward to trace the marks. “Jesus, what happened this time?”

He worried the sheet in his flesh hand. “Same old, same old: got blown up and was introduced to the strongest sprinkler system in this galaxy,” he joked to no one’s amusement.

“You look like an abuse survivor—I’m—is there someone I need to beat up?”

Rhys snorted to cover up the swell of gross emotions that squeezed his chest at her words. “I don’t think there’s enough of him left, but you can try?”

She didn’t smile. “Rhys,” she struggled to find the words or maybe there was too much she wanted to say, “are you okay?”

Yvette continued before Rhys could answer. “I mean…like in life. We really didn’t have a chance to discuss your demotion and I know how much your job meant to you. I just, I hope that this isn’t some outlet or, I don’t know,” she ended angrily and smacked the side of Rhys’s arm. “I can’t believe you’re having me discuss feelings.”

She was right, he should be devastated that he lost his job. He would have rather clawed out his own eyes than work as a janitor, not because of the job itself, but because it meant he wasn’t good enough to be a programmer; not good enough to make it in Hyperion. His identity as a company man, as someone who was smart, ruthless, and driven had been completely shattered by Vasquez and how did he react?

Did he even react?

“I—I don’t know how I feel,” he admitted both to himself and Yvette. He was honestly kind of lost; he felt like he was living someone else’s life and that none of these things were happening to him but he was just witnessing it.

He had taken the first opportunity to run back to Handsome Jack; to be someone important; to matter, but that wasn’t really an achievable goal was it?

Yvette pulled back his attention with a gentle hand rested over the top of his own. He looked up and saw a tentative kindness in the brown orbs as if she was unsure of how to express the emotion. “I think that maybe you should figure that out,” she offered. “Start with finding one thing that makes you happy and then build from there.”

Rhys felt an extra wetness in his eyes and hastily blinked it away and covered it with a joke. “When did you become so smart? Have you been watching those Dr. Hill reruns?”

She shrugged, “I’m a woman; I’m superior in most ways.”

Rhys laughed and gave her a strong enough kick to push her off the bed. Its impact was lessened by her echoing laughter as she stumbled to her feet and walked out of the room, shouting over her shoulder, “Vaughn’s making hangover breakfast, so I’d get up quick if I were you.”

Rhys entered the kitchen two minutes later, still in pajama pants, hair a mess, and wearing the special edition Yennec-2 national forest socks complete with little trees and the official country’s fish. They did not match the faded, purple pants but he made it a point to only ever be presentable outside of the apartment; inside was a sacred sweatpants only zone.

Yvette nodded as he walked in as she sat on a barstool stretched out so her legs were resting across the other two. Rhys poured himself a cup of coffee and hopped up onto the counter by the pot, facing Yvette and next to Vaughn who was cooking at the stove. He was dressed similarly in sweatpants and a t-shirt and looked a little worse for wear.  
“Where’d you go?” Rhys asked with a nod in his best friend’s direction.

Vaughn grimaced as he flipped the hash browns. “We started at The State and then, I think, we went to that club on the tenth floor, the one with the purple lights? I don’t remember much after that besides throwing up into a trashcan next to the elevator and crashing on the couch.”

Rhys whistled. “I’m still impressed by the amount of clubbing you accountants get up to. Aren’t you guys still ranked number one in After Work Parties?”

“I think Real Estate has us beat out for AWPs this year,” he replied, obviously saddened.

“At least your department is on the list,” Yvette interjected.

The shorter man smirked before dividing the hash browns onto three plates to join the scrambled cheese eggs, two pieces of bacon with grease, two sausages, and butter toast. He passed out the completed plates, tossed the dirty dishes in the sink and hopped up on the other side of the stove top to eat sitting on the counter with Rhys.

It was quiet for a few minutes as everyone wolfed down the food in front of them—Rhys only taking breaks to have a drink of coffee.

“Speaking of parties,” Vaughn transitioned, talking out from the side of his mouth that wasn’t filled with toast. “Rhys, did you check your mail yesterday?”

“Err, no, I don’t think so. Is it another student loan notice?” He whispered in fear.

Vaughn and Yvette both shared looks of resigned depression at the mention of the dreaded enemy. “No, thank God, you got an invitation for the Annual Charity Auction next month,” he gestured to the pile of letters stacked on a side table next to the couch.

“Isn’t that only for associates and Heads?” He asked, confused why he would still even be invited now that he was a janitor.

“Maybe it hasn’t gone through the official records, yet,” Yvette suggested.

“You should go,” Vaughn added. “I mean, I don’t want to go alone and then you get the opportunity to crash it and potentially shove a tray of shrimp into Vasquez’ stupid face.”

That did sound like fun, but there was a larger part of him that thought it would just end in utter embarrassment for him as Vasquez publically outed him as janitor desperate to enter back into the realm he used to be a part of by sneaking into the party.

“I'll think about it,” he finally answered, finishing off his plate.

\--

Monday came around fast.

The three of them hand spent most of the weekend watching trash television, playing with Peaches, and not thinking about work or anything important. It was nice and Rhys had a moment where he simply committed the days to memory as a time where he was perfectly content.

But then it was back to work, back to walking the halls of Hyperion and cleaning after the workers that had no respect for anything other than themselves and meeting the next deadline. Rhys often found himself trying to remember what he was like (and knowing that he was just like the rest of them and hating himself for it). The bruises and the wound on his leg didn’t really hurt, not compared to the gunshot wound and the other injuries he had to live through, so his work wasn’t impeded that much—he still used it as an excuse to move slower from room to room.

He ambushed in the hallway of the seventh floor just as he was exiting a breakroom filled with half-dead employees that were staring at their cups of caffeine like they might contain the answers to the universe. He was checking the amount of cleaner he had left right outside the door when he heard someone clear their throat.

It was at this point when he saw Darren’s face that he remembered Future Strategies was located on the 7E floor.

“Hey,” he greeted wearing a perfectly tailored business suit, his hands shoved into his pant pockets.

Rhys chocked on his own spit and made a weird sort of guttural sound that was nowhere near human speech. He then went to hold out his hand as if to shake hands, then thought that was fucking stupid, and just ended up jiggling the bottle of cleaner once in front of his body and trying to awkwardly laugh it off.

His expression wasn’t friendly this time, but close off and carefully neutral. Rhys hated himself a little bit for causing that type of caution, and figured he was about to add yet another bruise to his collection when Darren swung for his face.

“How’s your friend?” it was a leading question.

Rhys had the chance here to keep up the lie, which would be the equivalent of telling Darren that he didn’t want to see him again by maintaining the weak excuse. Or, he could admit to lying and accept whatever came next.

“Look, Darren,” he began and immediately regretted it. It was the worst way to start a sentence and was usually followed by a truth that the other person didn’t want to hear. “I lied, but—”

Darren held up a hand and Rhys fell silent, worrying the bottle of cleaner in his hands. “I get it, okay? You don’t have to make excuses. It’s kinda dickish to confront you like this when you clearly aren’t interested in me, anymore. But, I just wanted to say that…that I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I usually don’t, uh, act that on the first date and I moved a little too fast—”

“No!” Rhys practically yelled, causing a few employees lingering the hallway to turn and glare at the couple. He made sure to continue in a lower register, “No, it wasn’t you, really. It was me—I panicked because I haven’t been in a relationship since like college and I like you. So, I did something stupid and cowardly and I’m sorry. I never wanted to be the guy that stood anyone up.”

Once he finished, he realized that what he said was partially true. It was white lie, but the reasons that had fallen out of his mouth were accurate: he was nervous going into the date and not being what Darren expected. He was nervous because, if he was honest with himself, he had never been in a committed relationship with anyone, ever. He always ended up pushing anyone who cared away just as things got serious and maybe he preemptively did that to Darren.

“You like me?” Darren repeated in a small voice.

Rhys stared at the bright yellow of the cart and couldn’t deny it. He liked Darren (and maybe there was a part of him, of old Rhys, that was attracted to Handsome Jack or, at least, attracted to his power). But there was a chance that he liked Darren more.

 _Find what makes you happy and then build from there_ , he thought, remembering Yvette’s words.

“Yeah, yeah I do,” Rhys made sure to look Darren in the eyes to show his sincerity. “And if I haven’t royally ruined everything and if you don’t hate me, I’d like to try again.”  
The neutral expression on Darren’s face shifted into something tentative, something like hope and it brightened his features considerably. The boyish, pretty nature of his face came into focus as a small smile pulled up his lips.

“One date,” he agreed and Rhys felt an enormous weight fall off his shoulders. “But, we do it properly this time: no touching, polite conversation, learn things about our family, talk about work, and no sex.”

Rhys hooked the bottle back on the cart and held out his hand. “Deal,” he said as Darren shook it firmly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is taken from a song by the Middle Kids called Never Start.


	8. Starboy Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, beautiful people! 
> 
> As you can see, this chapter is Part I there will be a Part II and the events that happen will be directly related and will dramatically change the course of the story. 
> 
> Hope you guys like it, and Part II should be out soon since I already have every beat planned (for the most part haha).

_Legend of the fall took the year like a bandit_  
_100 on the dash get me close to God_  
_We don’t pray for love, we just pray for cars_  
_Look what you’ve done_  
_I’m a mother fuckin’ starboy_  
_Look what you’ve done_  
_I’m a mother fuckin’ starboy_

 

[Pandora]

In a slow, uneven, and messy wave, the crowd bent.

It created a waved ripple effect illuminated in the night by the massive spotlights that surrounded the compound, making circles of intense, white light followed by intense shadow where the light did not touch. None of them matched as some cast wide, filled with working bulbs while others were small made of mostly broken bulbs and all of them structured at various heights, disrupting the uniformity even more. It did the job of showing the crowd: an entire mash-up of people, bandits, and marauders. Their heights, like the spotlights, ranging so drastically that the ceremonial aspect of bending a knee was sort of lost as the goliaths were too large and the smaller psychos too short.

Unable to keep quiet, there was a constant level of noise as the crowd shouted out various sentences that only made sense to themselves that created a buzz around the whole compound. Randomly, one would yell louder than the rest in a burst of sound and someone would shush them just as loud.

It became silent as their two people stepped through the middle, walking along the pathway made by the parting of the followers in the dirt. The first was short, keeping her eyes forward in a manner that wasn’t anything less than cold and calculating. The second was tall, scanning the crowd with a deranged smirk that spoke of instability and unpredictability.

Neither spoke as they cut through the crowd filled with reverie.

Their destination was at the back of the compound, passing rows of ramshackle houses and structures, built by the hands of madmen; some made large and wide and others small and stacked up to two, three, or four floors. Graffiti covered all of the walls in a rainbow of colors and in various levels of illiteracy, but all in the same theme of declaring themselves to be followers of the Cult of the Vault. The structure at the end was by far the largest almost castle-like in its design with a lowerable bridge one needed to lower in order to enter.

They were greeted by the Bandit Leader as soon as they crossed it.

“The Slag Titan welcomes the Holy Prophets to his camp!” Slag Titan greeted in a booming voice. He was dressed in bandit armor painted in chipped purple and a crude drawing of a mythical, Greek monster on the chest plate in black. Despite it being the same color, the pieces did not match in shape or size and was more of an amalgamation of armor rather than a set. His head was left uncovered, his hair falling in long dreads around his head and shoulders and his face was smeared in red and black war paint.

“You have something for us,” Troy demanded through the same smirk he had been holding, his voice tinted dark and low.

The leader nodded. “Yes, Slag has many gifts for the prophets. It is held in his chambers in EastWest room, he will lead you there, now!”

Tyreen raised a single white eyebrow, Troy snorted.

“Go on, then,” the brother said.

Slag Titan spun on his heel and headed into his castle, leading the twins inside, which didn’t look too different from the outside: graffitied walls, jagged metal pieces holding the walls together, random collection of stolen objects. The only big difference being was the emptiness as all the bandits that would have normally been loitering in the castle where outside, since all wanted to see their prophets arrive.

The EastWest room was designed for torture.

All of the traditional designs were present and accounted for: chains hanging from the ceiling, blood permanently caked onto the walls, the floors stained in red and black, and a collection of body parts thrown across the entire space.

Tyreen displayed no change in expression, but Troy couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the cliché.

It was intended to hold several prisoners at once, but currently only one was present. She was hanging on the furthest wall, his arms chained up above her head, which was tipped into her chest. Her clothes were torn in the places that she had been cut into, revealing red and bruised skin, and marked on one side of her body with swirling tattoos.

The Slag Titan stood proudly in front of the unconscious woman, his arms splayed wide like he was presenting her as a game show prize. “A siren! As a gift to our prophets who will lead us to the Garden in the Vault!”

Troy and Tyreen wore matching smirks and fist bumped without looking away from the raven-haired siren.

\--

“I knew there had to be something wrong with you. You were too perfect and I was actually getting really frustrated that I couldn’t find a single flaw. And then I see this and the balance to the universe has been restored,” Rhys said sagely, using a spoon to point dramatically at the man sitting across from him who had just poured milk into his bowl first and the cereal second.

They were at Darren’s apartment.

Rhys had spent the weekend and had tried not to think too much into it (he failed).

It was adorable and domestic and Rhys had a series of panic attacks about it over the course of two days that had left him a jittery mess of feelings, nerves, and anxiety. He had tried to make up for his increasing neuroticism through humor, which worked in varying degrees.

This joke had Darren looking up at Rhys from the other side of small table, cereal box held aloft in an uncompleted action. “You got all that from my breakfast?”

“Only serial killers put the milk in first,” He replied and pretended to do a sweep of the room, “It’s a clear indication that you have like bodies hidden the walls.”

Darren dumped a generous amount of corn flakes into the bowl. “Oh, you won’t find the bodies,” he muttered, ominously.

Rhys laughed. “I would’ve only believed that if I hadn’t seen you actually scream when we watched that zombie movie.”

“Hey!” He protested around a mouth full of cereal. “At least I managed to stay in my seat.”

Rhys scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. He thought it would a good idea to watch a horror film yesterday; a perfect excuse to have Darren snuggle up to him. He figured that after actually having experienced life-threatening situations he would be fine watching something that was clearly fictional. In reality, it turned into an hour and half of two cowards wrapped around each other as they jumped at every sound effect and sudden camera movement in the film.

“But, besides that,” Darren transitioned, shoving his empty bowl to the side and catching Rhys’s gaze. “I, uh, had a really good time this—this weekend.”

Rhys’s spoon clanked hard against the ceramic of the bowl as his hand jittered. “Ye—yeah, it was pretty, a lot of fun? I mean, I had a good time, really good time. Yeah,” he trailed off with a cringe. “I wouldn’t be…opposed to doing it again?”

It took him a good few seconds to risk opening his eyes, bracing for whatever reaction Darren had to the possibility of extending the relationship after all of Rhys’s fuck-ups. The large smile, the one that should all of his teeth was something he both wanted and feared.

“I would like that,” he replied after controlling his grin enough to speak.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Rhys valiantly looked anywhere but at Darren as his cheeks burned from the amazingly large boob he was acting like. The embarrassed, nervous energy resulted in him ungracefully jerking out from his seat, the chair scrapping loudly over the tile as he practically fled in the direction of the kitchen. He barely managed to remember to bring the empty bowl with him to clean in the sink with mechanical movements that had nothing to do with having a cybernetic arm.

God, he was happy.

He liked being here, in this place with Darren. It was nice, simple, and easy. He could already imagine spending every weekend like this and watching as it slowly progressed into something more. He would work as a janitor and live out his life on Helios with two best friends and boyfriend. He knew there were a million things that could go wrong in between now and that future, but as of now, it seemed like falling into a life with Darren was…natural.

Could this really be it?

Could this really the result?

Could he have this?

A second bowl clanged down into the sink, but it was the added pressure of arms snaking around his waist that pulled Rhys back. It made him realize was scrubbing the same spot on the bowl underneath the now cold water running over his hands.

“I think it’s clean,” Darren pointed out, his hands dancing along the flat plains of Rhys’s stomach.

He awkwardly laughed and turned off the water. “I don’t know, bacteria are pretty wily.”

Darren hummed, placing a feather light kiss to the back of Rhys’s neck. “I was just thinking that there were other things we could be doing, but if you’re really worried—”

Rhys pulled his hands off just enough to spin around in the embrace, resting the small of his back against the sink. He ran a pruning hand up Darren’s arm, tracing over the smooth skin unblemished by scars or muscle until he reached the edge of the shirt sleeve. His metal arm remained against the sink so he can lean far enough back to look into Darren’s eyes.

“Can I ask you about something serious?”

“Sure,” he said immediately, his hands returning to Rhys’s sides.

“And you’ll be completely honest?”

“Unless it’s about the bodies.”

Rhys smiled and then dropped it as he prepared to ask his question. “Does it bother you that I’m not—that I’m just a janitor or I guess, that I might always be just this?”

Do you expect more from me (because I do).

Darren got that look of intense concentration on his face before he answered. “To be honest: no. It’s kinda why I asked you out in the first place,” he glanced warily at Rhys who looked surprised, so he scrambled to clarify. “Not like I was stalking cleaning staff or anything. It’s not a weird fetish thing—it’s just I figured you wouldn’t be like other Hyperion employees who would put their work and career above everything else.”

Rhys hid the flinch, because for most of his life (and maybe, currently and always) that was who he is.

“Does that make me sound like an ass? I don’t mean that I don’t think you can’t have aspirations or—”

The shorter man stopped him with a finger over his lips and a shake of his head. He let the silence hang of a beat, trying to gather his thoughts. He had asked Darren to be honest, but he didn’t think he could it himself and he, yet, again found himself telling white lies. “I do have, you know, aspirations to be something more, but you are acting like you aren’t different from Hyperion employees yourself.”

“Well, then maybe it’s a good thing that we found each other,” he said once Rhys lowered his hand away from his lips to rest on the taller man’s collar.

Rhys wasn’t given a chance to answer before Darren was leaning in and closing the gap between them in a slow kiss. The guilt made his metal hand clench down hard around the sink, but he kissed back because he decided that even if he wasn’t who Darren thought he was, there was a chance that he could become him over time.

\--

Rhys left Darren’s apartment Sunday night, and the week that followed was so ordinary that it lulled him into a false sense of security. Just like with the previous time, Rhys had trouble believing that he had been placed within a situation that his life was literally almost taken from him. And the differences were so stark that it had split his life in two—it also created two Rhyss and he was starting to become uncertain which one he was.

This wasn’t even something he had thought about through the slow, almost boring week until his supervisor called him and told him he was requested to clean the 20E floor.

Which was Handsome Jack’s personal floor.

Which reminded Rhys that he was someone who existed and with him came violence and shootings and bombs and blood and terror-inducing excitement that Rhys might like a little more than he let on.

So, he might be panicking a bit as he stood inside of the nicest elevator on Helios as it travels smoothly up five floors to number 20. The doors ding open and Rhys unconsciously decided to use his cart as a shield, rolling it out first and blocking his whole body with it. He cautiously rolled through the entryway, which is made completely of white marble; the yellow Hyperion H is detailed into the floor in black and is large enough that it takes Rhys four whole steps to walk across it. His sneakers squeak across the shiny floor and he resisted the urge to take them off as it changes to plush carpet and the room opens open into an even wider one.

“Oh my God,” Jack’s voice greeted him, not letting him have a chance to take in any of the scenery besides noting one large couch that curved in the center of the room. “You were actually telling the truth. I thought you must’ve been joking, but here you are, well, I assume you are because I can’t actually see you, right now. But you’re a fucking janitor.”

Rhys sighed and since Jack had already pointed it out, he stepped out from behind the cart, and then his brain promptly short-circuited.

Because Jack was sitting on that couch he saw, paperwork and holograms spread out before him, his legs crossed. It was when Rhys noticed that he was wearing a pair of ripped jeans, not fashionably ripped, but made from time and wear, a mustard-yellow sweater and glasses. His eyes locked onto the glasses and he couldn’t bring himself to look away, they were black-rimmed and sliding down his nose.

Something like, “hnng,” fell out from his mouth and he tripped over his feet, only saved by his hand catching the side of the cart and holding himself up.

Jack raised a single eyebrow in amusement. “Are you having a stroke? Is it the cleaning fumes, because Hyperion health insurance doesn’t cover it and isn’t responsible for it.”

“N—no! It’s just that, uh,” he fumbled for any words that weren’t ‘glasses’, which was the only thing running through his mind and he just latched onto the last thing Jack had said and ran with it. “Why would I’ve been lying?”

He shrugged and the sweater slid further across his broad shoulder. “Why would I know what goes on in that strange head of yours? You fucking cried you first saw me and then laughed when a dude blew himself up.”

“Hey!” He called out with a pointed finger and a step forward. “You can’t lord the crying thing over me, I was doped to the gills and at one point one I was positive one of the nurses was a fish-person. I even got worried he wasn’t able to breathe and I offered him my water.”

Jack’s laughter had accompanied Rhys’s short tale and it left the younger man blushing while he stood not quiet in an area he assumed to be the living room. In a rare moment, Jack displayed normal human characteristics and gestured for Rhys to sit as if he was polite and inviting someone into his home.

It took a few beats for Rhys to answer the summons by shuffling across the carpet, uncomfortably aware of how he was dressed and how many stains were on his work outfit that the older man could clearly see. He reached the couch and before thinking about it, dropped onto the table, crunching pieces of paper underneath his butt, but he wanted to avoid dirtying the pristine, white furniture. He sat facing Jack, his knees resting a few inches away from where the other man was on the couch and his hands folded into his lap to take up a little space as possible.

Jack gave him a weird look at his sitting choice but didn’t call him on it. “So, I think I can guess what you want your reward to be,” he said, looking over the janitor uniform.  
Oh, he hadn’t thought of that. “I didn’t—how do you know that I didn’t just decide to switch jobs? Maybe my dream was to clean the floors of Helios…”

“Uh, uh, play it again, Sam,” Jack barked out a laugh. “Who demoted you?”

Rhys wasn’t going to let that pass. “No, Jack. How did you know?”

Jack sighed as if he was being put out, tossed the stack of paper in his hands to the side and pushed his glasses up into his hair. “Because, princess, I’ve known you a total of three days collectively, thereabouts and you have the same drive as everyone else who applies to this company: to be at the top,” he paused. “But unlike them, you actually might have the potential to do it.”

The instant warmth at the small compliment spoke volumes about how much Rhys still looked-up to the CEO. “I—really?”

“Don’t get too excited, you’d have to go through me first, cupcake,” he said with a smirk and leaned forward in a move that might be intended as physically intimidating. “But I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

“So, is this a keep my enemies closer thing?” Rhys partially joked; very much wanting to know why he was called up here.

“More of a keep my eyes on you thing,” he replied and stood. And for a brief moment, he was millimeters away from Rhys, being forced to shift towards the younger man to have room to stand among the various stacks of paperwork on the ground. He smelled faintly like before as if he used the cologne so often that it had just become a natural part of his scent even when hadn’t applied it. There was a lot of skin where the sweater rode up and the pants dipped low (ill-fitting), but more importantly there were hints of scars that disappeared under the clothing.

And then he was gone, stepping around the paper stacks and heading towards the kitchen, which carried the same theme of white, sleek, and modern. Rhys wondered if this was a dismissal that he was expected to leave now, but Jack returned a beat later with two glasses and a bottle of brown liquor, most likely whiskey. He claimed his spot back on the couch and setting the glasses on the table next to Rhys’s leg, he popped the top of the bottle and poured a finger of liquor into each glass.

“You know it’s like 3 o’clock in the afternoon…on a Wednesday,” Rhys muttered as Jack poured.

He didn’t dignify Rhys’s incredulity with a response and simply handed him the closest glass, which he took with minor hesitation. It was cold in his hand, and he figured it was one of those perpetually chilled cups advertised exclusively for serving top-shelf booze. He took a tentative sip, the whiskey warming its way down his throat and stomach—he was suddenly reminded he hadn’t eaten anything today.

Jack copied Rhys’s movements, taking a hearty sip before leaning back into the cushions on the couch while he stared unnervingly steady at the janitor. “This is where you answer my question,” he demanded.

Rhys sighed and looked down into the liquor for courage. “I was hired here straight out of college, 21, and I made it to associate programmer before I was 24. I am—was—fucking good at my job, not the best, but good and Vasquez always hated me for it. I don’t know why, the guy didn’t really make friends with anyone, but he hated me like it was personal or something. Anyways, after being absent for a few days he took it upon himself to relieve Henderson of his position as Head and then demoted me to VP of Janitorial Services,” He finished and took a swig.

“I wondered what happened to that old geezer,” Jack mumbled. “There was a distinct lack of the menthol smell in the meeting rooms. But I could have this, uh—what’s his name?—Vasquez guy killed if you want his position.”

It spoke volumes about how often this happened in Hyperion that both men spoke very casually about murdering your way into a position. If the rumors are to be believed, that’s even how Jack got his current position as CEO.

Rhys shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I—”

“Really,” Jack interrupted to stop Rhys’s floundering. “It wouldn’t be that big of a problem. I haven’t actually met the guy, yet, Fourth Quarter meetings are later this week, but I can make sure you’re in that room inst—”

“I don’t know if I want my job back!” He blurted out, the suddenness added to its volume as if he had yelled at the older man who, for his part, snapped his jaw shut and then calmly took another sip of whiskey.

There is a long pause where Rhys simply looked down at his almost empty glass and desperately hoped that this is a nightmare and he just didn’t confess some Actual Truth ™ to, arguably, the one man on Helios that couldn’t care less. This is a conversation that he should be having with Yvette and Vaughn with a gross amount of snacks and 12-pack while he panics.

And then there is a hand entering his vision and it is taking his glass. Rhys looks up as Jack set both glasses back down on the table and pours more whiskey (much more than a finger’s worth) and then folds Rhys’s hand back around the cool, clear cup. His skin is much warmer than its surface and for a beat his hand is sandwiched between the glass and Jack’s fingers.

When Jack finally breaks the silence, he speaks while staring at his own glass. “The lack of responsibility is always easier.”

For the first time, Rhys realizes how much older Jack is than himself.

And then he looks up from his whiskey to stare directly at Rhys and adds, “Do you know you’re the only one who calls me by my name? Of course, you don’t that would be a weird thing for you to notice, but it’s true. At first, I figured that you were drugged and half the words that came out of your mouth were missing vowels anyways, so I ignored it, but then you kept doing it. Every single time we met, you dropped my name.”

Rhys winced. “The only one, really?”

“Yeah, princess,” he looked somewhat amused by it and Rhys hoped that was a good sign, “Which happens to be one of the reasons why I know you don’t actually like your job. You may think you do, and you might for a few months, hell, a whole year, but then it’s going to start weighing you down. Because you’re the type of person to call the manic, murdering, badass-awesome, CEO of the most successful company ever created, ‘Jack’.”

He was only half through his second glass, but the whiskey was strong and he was already feeling a nice warmth tingle throughout his body. He’s still not drunk enough to have this conversation because he was unprepared for it and it is very quickly devolving into serious territory—Rhys desperately wants it to shift back into the realm he understands, the one where Handsome Jack is threatening his life and Rhys is trying to hide how scared he is.

He is starting to see Jack as a human and it is uncomfortable.

“How do you I’m not just doing that to insult you or something?” He offered.

Jack smirked around the rim of his glass. “Because you have actually insulted me and this is different. This is even more dangerous—you consider yourself my equal either through natural progression or circumstance, I don’t know, but you do and I should really have you maim and killed for it.”

Why doesn’t that feel like a threat? Rhys thought.

“Why won’t you?” Is possibly the stupidest question to ask.

Jack seemed to agree as it causes the smirk to finally reach his eyes. “It’s a little too boring and predictable for my tastes: when I kill someone I like it to be a surprise. People who say stabbing someone in the back is cowardly clearly haven’t experienced the joy of watching some dude gape like a fish as his innards spill out over the floor,” the manic tint to his expression is back, and this time Rhys doesn’t feel quite as scared.

The same drive that had him pretending to be cool so he could hang out with the popular kids in high school has him replying, “Sounds like a bitch to clean-up,” with false casualness instead of gagging at the violent image like he wants to.

Handsome Jack laughs a little too loud and knocks back the rest of his drink.

\--

So, it’s become a thing.

Maybe.

Possibly.

For certain…something.

In the quiet hours of the night, Rhys might almost classify them as friends but is afraid of saying it out loud because it might break whatever spell has transformed him and Jack enough to meet in this strange place of camaraderie. In any case, he is now spending a majority of his work week in Jack’s home (because that’s where he works from as his office is being rebuilt) and it is still terrifying but in a way Rhys images how owning a tiger would be: cautiously optimistic that it knows you well enough not to snap your neck between its teeth, but perfectly aware at all times that it could.

It was—

—exciting.

There was something completely awesome about being a part of an inner circle, of knowing the man at the very top, and then being able to tentatively refer to him as a friend.  
More importantly, Jack was a pretty cool friend (possibly) to have.

He wasn’t Vaughn or Yvette who were the types of best friends to hold back your hair as you puked into a toilet, he was more of the friend that would laugh at you the morning after but then buy you a new set of clothes to replace the ones you threw up on. Vaughn and Yvette would threaten anyone who hurt him, Jack would hand him a knife.

Their interactions went a little something like this:

Thursday—

“So, I had that first wannabe assassin captured, the one that shot you…and me, uh, I’d forgotten about that; the fucker shot me,” Jack says as soon as Rhys gets comfortable enough on the couch.

“Doesn’t that mess with your ‘Master Plan’,” the capitals and quotations are implied.

“He stopped moving around and I got bored watching him sit in the same rooms and stare at walls. It’s more entertaining now that I can peel off his fingernails whenever I feel like it.”

“Has he said anything interesting?”

“Just more of the Vault bullshit while glowering appropriately here and there. He’s bandit scum like the chick that strangled you, so they’re all coming from Pandora and sneaking onto my station, somehow. I’ve decided to help them out and reopen shuttle passage off Helios. You’re welcome.”

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, but thanks I guess?”

Friday—

“I met that Vasquez today,” Jack speaks first—he always speaks first—just as Rhys decides that he’s going to try out sitting in one of the armchairs.

It was a mistake; they were not comfortable after about five minutes.

“He’s a complete idiot, but he at least has some smart people working for him. Also, the head of sales told me point blank that our stocks had dropped for the first time since I’d taken over the company. So, the one death that I reserve for every meeting went to that guy, asshole.”

“You pre-meditate your murders?”

“Trust me, I never have to reach very far for an excuse.”

Saturday—

“I can’t believe you actually answered my text on a Saturday night; you must live a boring life, cupcake.”

Rhys huffs and angrily stomps into Jack’s kitchen. The said man is leaned against the counter, a glass of wine in one hand and his ECHO in the other. The younger man glares at him before slipping past and going straight for the fridge, digging through the vast amount of food until he finds the Jell-O.

“One, I don’t even remember giving you my number, and two, you said it was an emergency,” he emphasized this by stabbing into his Jell-O cup with a spoon and counting his grievances on his metal hand.

“You left your ECHO laying around on my furniture and at that point it became my property, and I only said it was urgent.”

“I ditched Vaughn for this; it was pancake night.”

“Oh my god, your life is pathetic. You should be thanking whatever deity you worship every night that you became friends with me.”

“We—we’re friends?”

“You’re asking me that?”

Monday—

“You didn’t answer my text on Sunday,” he doesn’t say it as a complaint just a statement, but Rhys still isn’t sure that Jack’s capable of displaying the normal human range of emotions. So, he labels this as ‘disappointed’ in his head for future reference.

“I do have a life, you know,” he responds, crossing his arms and trying not to think about Darren and how they spent the entire day in bed doing wonderful, amazing things.

“I never would’ve guessed, sweetheart.”

“Well, I do, so…”

“…so?”

“Never mind, do you have any more of that scotch I just had to clean up puke that had managed to miraculously cover an entire bathroom. I guess I have to give them props to getting to the bathroom, but Jesus, I didn’t know a person could hold that much vomit in them at once.”

“4 liters for the average person.”

“—how do you know that?”

Jack wiggles his eyebrows and leers. Rhys decides that it would be a good idea to fill up his glass all the way and ignore propriety completely (he was in the right company for it anyways). He then walks over to where Jack is splayed across a collection of chase lounges that face high-faulted windows over-looking the hazy atmosphere surrounding Pandora, an arm thrown over his face to block the light. It’s only as he’s kicking Jack’s legs aside so that he can sit that he sees the blood.

“Yours?”

Jack snorts. “Nope, kitten. Your chick is dead, though.”

“My—oh, the bandit…”

“Lisa’s pretty sure it’s a cult operating somewhere on Pandora and that it's worrying they somehow have the resources to get up to Helios, but she’s a paranoid soldier who won’t sit with her back to a door or window.”

“You won’t sit with your back to a door.”

“My paranoia is justified as this fucking cult proves. God, I hate Pandora.”

Rhys takes a healthy sip from his glass and stares at the vast expanse of space and the browned surface of Pandora, and feels a bit lighter than he had before he walked in here.  
“So, she’s dead.”

Jack holds up the hand not covering his face. “Scout’s honor.”

“Jack…that’s not scout’s honor, that’s the shocker.”

\--

So, yeah, they might be friends.

And Rhys is too much of a coward to tell Vaughn or Yvette, because Vaughn would give him worried puppy dog eyes that grown me shouldn’t be able to pull off effectively and Yvette would give him her disappointed face and he would crumble like sand. He doesn’t even consider the idea of telling Darren: he doesn’t know him well enough to know his stance on the CEO and it would lead to questions that Rhys doesn’t want to answer.

His two lives are becoming complicated and he’s seen enough rom-coms to know how this ends.

But he honestly doesn’t know what else to do.

Its thoughts like this where he finds himself overjoyed at having a pretty interesting life filled with people that care about him, which then slides into a depression that he only has it because he’s lying to everyone he cares about. It easy to get lost in them through the menial task of scrubbing a floor with a mop that may have been made three decades ago (it is scarily good at cleaning up blood though), and leads to him going through his work on autopilot.

Roll cart.

Scrub.

Dry.

Roll cart.

Scrub.

Dry.

“Well, well, well look who it is: Mr. Vice President of Janitorial Services himself,” the obnoxious voice of Hugo Vasquez crones around him, echoing off the tile and linoleum acoustics of the men’s bathroom.

Rhys was lost in his thoughts, completely unaware that there was another human being in the room with him. He must have not checked the stalls like he should of, too caught up in untangling the mess of his life, and all he can do is stare as Vasquez walks by him, shoving the cart so it rolls across the room. It crashes loudly against a wall, tipping over and spilling the contents all over the floor in a clatter. Rhys can’t help but flinch at the sound and for a beat, he is back in Jack’s office as the windows explode inwards.

“What got nothing to say?” He mocked, staring at Rhys through the reflection of the mirror as he washes his hands. “Not surprising, you never were that bright.”

It’s a weak insult but the tone of his voice has Rhys gripping the mop tight enough for his knuckles to turn white while he desperately tries to keep himself centered through taking deep and steady breaths. “Why would I have anything to say to you?”

The larger man turned around, flicking off the water and leaning against the porcelain sink. “I was hoping for a thank you, I did get you that promotion; VP is a big step up from associate.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Rhys said through clenched teeth; his hands are shaking.

Vasquez responded by reaching sideways and turning on the closest faucet on full blast. It only takes a few seconds before the water is overflowing and cascading onto the floor, and Rhys knows that Vasquez won’t let him by to turn it off.

He doesn’t know if he would be able to move at this moment anyways. His knees are locked and his chest is getting tighter and distantly, he knows these might be the symptoms of a panic attack. He only ever gets them at night after nightmares that were based on reality, and it’s much more jarring dealing with it in the light of day. He doesn’t want Vasquez to notice, he can’t think of anything worse happening than that, so he lashes out with the one thing he can lord over the larger man.

“Are you acting out because the CEO thinks you’re worthless?”

The muscles in his arms bunch like he’s getting ready to hit the smaller man; Rhys shakily smirks and decides to use all of the anger and viciousness that has been building up in him since he met Hugo Vasquez to tear him apart.

“I mean, it’s not surprising. Even Henderson thought you were fucking dumb and he only kept you on because it was easy to pin all of his fuck-ups on you. Maybe instead of parading around the office you should’ve learned how to do your job, and maybe daddy CEO would actually love you.”

“Because the truth is: you never would have made Head of Programming. Unlike me who would have eventually made it through hard work and actual goddamn talent; the only way you were going to make it there was either through fucking or killing and even then, you’re not going to keep it for long if the rumors are true.”

God, he wants him to hurt. He wants to make him cry, he wants him to feel just as humiliated as the day he made him a janitor while standing in Head’s office, smiling. He’s starting to understand why Handsome Jack likes to verbally abuse his underlings because he feels fucking fantastic. Vasquez is looking at him with a mix of fury and concealed pain and Rhys wants nothing more than to dig the knife in deeper and twist until he sees blood and fear.

There is a vice grip on his arm and Vasquez is tugging him close enough that he could feel the choleric anger rolling off of him as a physical heat. The mop clatters to the floor, “At least I don’t have to clean shit up off the floor.”

And then Vasquez swings and Rhys tumbles backwards, his feet slipping on the water and landing on his metal arm with a crack of tile. He can feel the blood running down from his nose, he is all too familiar with the feeling, and looks up through watery eyes at the other man who straightens his suit jacket before turning away and leaving.

The bathroom door slams shut behind him and Rhys is left on the cold tile, water seeping into his uniform and blood running down over his lips, leaving a taste of copper between his teeth and the memory of smoke in his lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have also updated the Work Summary because this story has become a lot more introspective than I expected lol
> 
> Until next time!


	9. Starboy Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STRONGFORK!!!!! What a headass!
> 
> Anyways, uh, I guess, enjoy this super long chapter where shit goes down. As always, you guys are the best and I hope you have a good week!

_I’m tryin’ to put you in the worst mood, P1 cleaner than your church shoes, ah_  
_Milli point two just to hurt you, all red Lamb just to tease you, ah_  
_None of these toys on lease too made your whole year in a week too, yah_  
_Main bitch out of your league too, side bitch out of your league too, ah_  
_House so empty, need a centerpiece_  
_Twenty racks on a table cut from ebony, cut that ivory into skinny pieces_  
_Then she clean it with her face, man, I love my baby_

[Five Years Ago—Sophomore Year]

Rhys was already drunk when he stumbled into his third party of the night. He doesn’t know what day it is, it might have been Tuesday, but he had been constantly tipsy since Saturday and after the pills, everything had started to blur and morph into one long day. It wouldn’t the first time and if he was being honest he intentionally sought out these several day long benders of mind-numbing oblivion. So, one could say he was a pro at this and always managed to find his way to all of the majorities parties being conducted on any day of the week.

It’s kind of what he is known for on campus.

“Talk to Rhysie, he’ll get you into the best parties.”

“Aw, man, if you’re lookin’ for a good time, Rhys’s your guy.”

“Dude’s got me into clubs I didn’t even know existed—yeah that one on 5th.”

He’s pretty well-known in the science and mathematics departments and has a standing invitation to any party being held anywhere by anyone at any time.  


And tonight is no different.

The place he fell into was an actual club, nestled in between two abandoned buildings on the outskirts of town. It was one of the shadier of the establishments, but it was open and packed any day of the week. The flashing lights and heavy bass filtered underneath his skin through sound and heat until he couldn’t feel anything else besides it. He felt as if he was floating as he weaved his way onto the dance floor and as pulled from one embrace to another. He swayed with whoever had their hands on him and it gave him an absolute rush of unbridled freedom to just simply move without thought or care.

At some point there was a body behind and in front of him, moving with the beats powering through the speaker system. And then one of them was dragging him away from the dance floor and into the bathroom, passing groups of people in various states of intoxication that looked magical under the neon lights.

They crashed into the bathroom and Rhys finally got a good enough look at his captor to see that she was female, tall, and wearing a skin-tight dress that showed tinted green skin underneath. Not human, his brain supplied but she was smiling at him and pulling out baggie filled with white powder, and her inhumanness was discarded right out the window.

Like fish on a hook, he was pulled towards her.

Her teeth were sharp and pointed when she smiled but Rhys’s attention had already moved to the drugs that she was pouring out on the rim of the sink and cutting into lines. She was speaking a language Rhys couldn’t understand, but the act of holding out a rolled up bill was universal. He didn’t even hesitate, hurrying to get that high back in his bloodstream, he was beginning to have lucid thoughts and that was unacceptable.

The drug rushed through his system and had his body shivering with the flood of endorphins.

The girl finished the other two lines and giggled.

Rhys laughed with her and the world once again took on that wonderful hazy glow as they both wandered back onto the dance floor and then lost each other in the crowd of moving bodies.

\--

[Present]

Rhys woke up with his face aching and three missed calls from Darren on his ECHO. What he wanted to do most was crawl back into bed and ignore the world until the pain went away and he was able to think without his skull feeling like it was going to crack in half. Despite his wants, his hand was already hitting redial and laying the ECHO close enough on the pillow so he could hear Darren through the speaker. As it rang, Rhys pulled up the covers to shield him from the artificial lights of his room, creating a little cocoon on his bed to hide under.

Darren picked up on the third ring. “Rhys! Thank god, I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. I was worried something had happened, are you okay?”

“Fine,” he croaked out.

There was silence on the other line. “Did you just wake up?”

“Yeah,” and then he lied and said, “I’m not feelin’ too hot so I’m takin’ a sick day. It’s why I didn’t answer your calls; I went home and passed out.”

“Oh, that sucks. Do you want me to bring you anything or stop by after work?” He offered. There was a background of noise behind him and if Rhys had to guess, he would say Darren was probably walking somewhere judging by the rhythm of his breathing.

Rhys vigorously shook his head into the pillow. “No, no! It’s all good just the flu, I think. I’ll force Vaughn to cook me something since he’s already stuck in the quarantine zone,” he finished with a forced laugh.

“Okay—” He doesn’t finish, turning away from the phone to speak to someone Rhys can’t hear. There is a quick exchange as some professional jargon flew back and forth where Rhys only caught every other word. He was dozing off by the time Darren spoke back into the phone, “Sorry, that was my boss, I gotta go. Text me if you need anything.”

“Yeah, of course,” Rhys muttered and then the line went dead.

He rolled onto his back and held up his ECHO above his face so he could type a quick text to one of his co-workers that he wouldn’t be going into work. The text sent; he tossed the device somewhere on the floor near his bed and burrowed deeper under the covers, hoping to sleep the rest of the day.

He fell into a light doze for a bit, letting his mind wander from thought to thought without really latching onto a single one.

This was interrupted by the buzzing of his ECHO.

He ignored it the first two times, but by the third time, it was annoying enough that he rolled over to the other side of the bed and groped blindly for the thing. His hand smacked around the carpet and came into contact with a shirt and a shoe before finding the cool metal of the device. He tucked it back underneath the covers and answered it on the fourth ring.

“‘Ello?”

“—fucking finally, princess,” came the irritated voice of Jack over the crackly speaker of his ECHO. “I don’t like being ignored and I know you don’t give two shits about answering your comm while working—”

“I didn’t go to work today,” he interrupted, mumbling through a yawn.

He could hear something rustle as Jack moved. “I don’t care if you never go to work, but I still expect you to show up when I text; that’s how this works,” it came out as petulant and Rhys had a brief moment where he pictured Jack as an overgrown child and chuckled to himself.

“I’m not leaving my bed.”

“Why?”

Rhys groaned and rolled to shove his face into his pillow, which ended up being exceptionally painful but he couldn’t bring himself to move once he was there. “I got punched in the face,” he whined, muffled by the pillow but close enough to the ECHO that it was picked up.

He could practically hear Jack rolling his eyes. “Boo hoo, cupcake. I get not going to work, because your job is lame, but avoiding me is a no-go, especially for something stupid, so get up out of bed and come up here and drink with me.”

He entertained doing that for a second, but his body wasn’t going to move and the very idea of having to put on clothes that weren’t pajamas sounded like a horrible plan. He considered explaining this to Jack, but he knew that the man would end up talking him (re: demanding) into walking all the way across Helios and join him on the 20th floor. Later, he would blame this decision on the pain, but right now he clicked the “End Call” button and shoved the device back on the floor where it belonged.

The small, sane part of Rhys was screaming that he just hung up on Handsome Jack, but his lethargy was stronger and it pulled him asleep before he realized what he had done.  


He was woken by violent pounding coming from the living room.

He startled, falling unceremoniously out of bed and hitting the floor with a dull thud. It took a second for the details of his own room to come into focus and the details of his day to come flooding back. He pushed himself up to his legs using the bed as a crutch and squinted through the throbbing pain behind his eyes.

The pounding continued.

Rhys moaned and resisted stomping his feet like an angry child as he was forced to throw his sheets back on the bed and leave his room. The living room was cold and he had a brief moment to wish he had tossed on a shirt, but hopefully, he could tell whoever was at the door to fuck off and then crawl back into his cocoon of misery and pain. He reached the door and yanked it open stronger than he intended, the cybernetics enhancing the movement such that the door banged solidly against the wall.

“You’re a pain in my ass,” The annoyed voice of Jack greeted him as he shoved his way into the apartment.

Rhys stood frozen in the doorway from a mixture of sleep induced confusion, normal confusion, and general disbelief. Because he had been asleep it seemed as if he had just hung up on Jack and now the man had magically teleported across the station to pound at his door. He eventually got his act together enough to slowly shut the door and tentatively turned around.

Jack was dressed in classic Handsome Jack style today, wearing the normal three layers of shirts in shades of dark brown and mustard yellow. His hair was styled, his pants were no longer ripped, and there were no glasses in sight. It was weird seeing the CEO version of Jack standing in the middle of his apartment; it had that same feeling of when he first saw one of his teachers outside of the classroom.

His reproachful look shifted into something closer to pitying as he looked over Rhys.

This is when he realized he was standing in front of Jack in nothing but a pair of soft, blue cotton pajama pants and nothing else. His hair was probably wild from sleeping all day and he hadn’t worked out in the past (his entire life), so he knew he was only thin and not muscular in any fashion.

“You’re an idiot,” it was a repetition of sentiment, similar to his greeting but delivered in a softer tone.

Rhys didn’t know how to respond to something like that, but he wasn’t given the chance to because Jack was stepping up to him and tugging him downwards with a solid grip on his chin. He had a moment to make a squeak of surprise before Jack reached up with his other hand, wrapped it around his nose, and snapped it back into place with a solid crack.

“Motherfucker!” He hissed, clutching his face as Jack stepped back with a smirk.

There was a fresh wave of hot blood rolling down over his lips and in between the crevices of his fingers along with it came a wave of pain that fanned out across his entire face. Tears burned at his eyes and when he spoke it was nasally, “What the fuck was that for?”

There were hands pulling his own away, uncaring of the blood that stained them and then Rhys was being forced to look at Jack. He was staring beneath his eye line, prodding the edges of his nose with a gentleness he wasn’t aware the older man was capable of. It came as a revelation that Jack was shorter than him by a few inches even through the watery vision he could see the top line of the mask against his forehead.

“It was dislocated, dumbass. You should be thanking me, because if it had healed like that it would’ve destroyed your pretty face,” he chastised.

His fingers were warm as they fluttered over Rhys’s skin and there was a heat spreading through his face that wasn’t a product of the sudden trauma. Jack was close enough that Rhys could feel his breath ghost over his lips, leading to him completely forgetting about the blood that was currently dripping over them and onto his chest.

And, yet, above of that influx of information there was only one thing his brain was focused on, “Pretty?” He questioned, his voice still nasally.

Jack snorted. “Well, not at this particular moment, but, yeah. Congrats, kid you got a nice face,” he said, drily finally taking a step back. “You should probably put some ice on that or you’re gonna balloon out like a corpse under the hot, Pandoran sun.”

Rhys frowned at the image but headed over into the kitchen, thinking it was a good idea to towel himself off as well—there was too much blood on his person at 1 in the afternoon. He nabbed a kitchen towel and run it under the sink before scrubbing off the blood on his chest. He gingerly wiped some of it off his face, or, as much as he could without a mirror to check, and then pulled out a pack of frozen peas from the freezer.

By the time he turned back around, Jack had made himself comfortable on the couch and was typing on his ECHO, the blue screen highlighting the sharp features of his face in the dim lightening of the living room. Without anything else to do, Rhys meandered over, holding the improvised ice pack over his nose and sat down next to the older man. For the next few minutes, the only sound was the rapid clicking of buttons and Rhys’s mouth breathing, but it was comfortable and it had Rhys wondering when he had become relaxed around the CEO (and why it seemed like such a big deal).

“Who hit you?”

The question startled Rhys even though it was delivered in a flat tone as Jack didn’t even bother looking away from ECHO while asking it.

“Uh, no one?”

Jack snorted, glancing sideways to send Rhys an unamused look. “Try again,” he ordered.

Rhys shrunk into the couch and mumbled, “Vasquez.”

More silence as Jack typed another message into his comm, the push of his fingers a fraction more violent than before. It took a few moments before he stopped what he was doing and spoke again; nothing in his tone had changed.

“I’m impressed that you’ve managed to acquire an arch nemesis at your age,” he commented. “I’m right like 99% of the time because I’m awesome, but this is just further confirming that you’ll make a decent CEO in the future, kid.”

Rhys was confused. “Shouldn’t that be a bad quality?”

“No,” Jack drew out the word. “That’ll just lead to you being surrounded by fake sycophants who will eventually poison you and you’ll be left saying _et tu, brute_ while you bleed out over the floor,” his voice trailed off at the end like he was slipping into a related memory.

Then he slid across the couch in a sudden movement that had Rhys jerking backward from surprise, but there was already a hand on the back of his neck holding him in place. And then Jack was in his face, his whole demeanor switching to intense and burning in less than a second; the low level of tension that had filled the room earlier cackled and sparked.

His other hand wrapped around the frozen bag and tugged it down so Rhys couldn’t hide behind it, revealing the mess of dried blood and purple bruising on his face. His eyes traveled the length of the damage, his hand tightening on Rhys’s nape, making the younger man squirm.

He didn’t speak until his eyes finished their exploration and ended locked with Rhys’s. “You have to make them hate you,” Jack hissed, the bag crunching in his grasp; Rhys swallowed. “Every competitor, every worker, every board member has to despise you—that’s the only way to know for certain where you stand with them. If they hate you, they can’t pretend to love you.”

Rhys didn’t know where to look or what to think. The words were delivered so harshly that it couldn’t be anything less than personal and he had the distinct feeling that Jack wasn’t only talking about his work, but his life in general—make them hate you and then they can’t love and leave you. He couldn’t process the meaning behind this while Jack was close enough that he could see the minor scratches in the metal that held the mask to his face, the exact shade of green and blue that made up each eye individually, and the dryness of his lips.

Unconsciously, he leaned in just as Jack leaned back, his hand sliding off of his neck. “You don’t punch someone who isn’t a threat,” he murmured, his tone much calmer than before. He trailed his eyes down to Rhys’s chest, his hand following the movement, “Or someone who doesn’t get under your skin.”

Rhys was still tense from the outburst and the continuous touching wasn’t helping. Part of him wanted desperately to lean into it, the touch, the anger, but another part equally wanted to push back from it afraid that the touch could turn violent at any moment.

It was the placement of the frozen peas back in his hand that fully broke the moment. It was followed by Jack leaning back and settling in the middle of the couch as if he hadn’t just crowded the younger man and spit out vicious truths accompanied by soft caresses.

Rhys furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, staring down at the last thing that Jack had given him. The man was back working, he assumed, typing away on his ECHO and not looking at anywhere in the vicinity of Rhys.

It was such a strange thing to say to someone.

What had been the point of it?

Unless—

Rhys’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline and he jerked his head to stare at the other man incredulously. Holy shit, was this Jack’s version of comfort? Was he trying to make him feel better? The thought seemed so preposterous that he couldn’t even comprehend it—this was Jack’s way of comforting people.

(And he cared enough to use it on Rhys, not only that, but he traveled all the way across Helios to do it).

Rhys slowly turned his head back forwards and sat in silent confusion.

He tracked through every interaction they had so far and dissected each one, now that he was looking at Jack in a different light. The first ones were pretty standard or went how Rhys imagined interacting with Handsome Jack would go based off of rumors and horror stories (the life-threatening situations made them a little less than normal, but whatever). He doesn’t know how to judge these interactions though like they went well enough that’s only based on the fact that he made it out alive, and that’s not a normal standard for meeting another human being.

Vaughn and he didn’t become friends because Vaughn didn’t kill him, they became friends through mutual interest and forced co-habitation.

But Jack was different—maybe, it actually said a lot that Jack didn’t kill him.

Was that the beginning of their friendship?

Rhys poured through their various meetings and was so caught up in doing so that he didn’t realize he was drifting off until it was too late and he was fast asleep.

\--

The wind whipped through his hair as he fell passed buildings, lights, and sounds.

His hands scrambled for a ledge but they kept moving away every time he reached out to grab them. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears, the wind rushing by, and the absolute silence of space that swallowed his screams. He could the faces of people laughing and talking as he dropped past each window and prayed that someone, anyone would look outside just for a second. Despite all logic, he heard a gunshot in the distance that had his head whipping upwards.

And then his body crashed through water. It was cold, icy as it dug passed his clothes and into his skin, pulling him under and under and under…

He was gasping for breath, letting more and more water in.

An explosion pushed him sideways and then there were hands grabbing the front of his shirt and dragging him up. He broke through the surface coughing and hacking and was tossed onto the solid ground by the hands that had saved him. There was dirt underneath his fingernails as he scrambled back to his feet only getting to his elbows before a foot was kicking him backward. He was on his back as a weight covered his body and hands wrapped around his throat. He struggled viciously but the weight simply increased and his body was forced to sink into the sand as the smell of the sea filled his nose.

\--

Rhys awoke with a scream and the taste of blood and saltwater on his lips.

There were hands holding him down. Panicked, he thrashed against the hold and swung his arm blindly trying to dislodge whoever was grabbing him. Whoever was above him, grunted at the impact and the weight left his body allowing Rhys to jack-knife up.

He frantically took in his surroundings and through the rapid beat of his heart and the pounding in his ears, he was able to realize that he was in his own living room. The familiar coffee table and rug all in shades of forest green and brown gave him a moment to breathe in comfort.

Once his heart rate slowed and the feel of dirt underneath his fingernails faded, he remembered that he hadn’t been alone when he fell asleep.

This revelation was answered with a groan from Jack who was pulling himself off the floor with a hand braced on top of the coffee table, which he sat down on a few seconds after. His other hand was nursing the bottom side of his jaw where there was already a pretty sizable bruise forming.

Rhys put two and two together and cringed. “S—sorry?”

Jack glared as he experimentally rolled his jaw that gave a solid pop. “I was right about that arm being the only thing about you that is potentially dangerous—it packs a damn hard punch.”

Rhys searched around the couch until he found the discarded bag of now lukewarm peas and held it out to Jack as a peace offering. Jack glanced from his face to the bag with an expression of mild annoyance before grabbing it and tossing it half-way across the room, taking something down with it if the crashing sounds were any indication.

“Those were warm enough to eat,” he flatly replied.

“At least your face is better off than mine,” the younger man attempted to joke, and then quickly transitioned. “Why’d you wake me up?"

“That’s always been the case, doll,” Jack purred, leaning forward on the coffee table and forcing Rhys to sink back into the couch. “And I woke you up because your screaming was irritating and it was interrupting my work,” he gestured to the two laptops, a holographic screen displaying a blueprint for a rifle, and some old fashion paperwork now scattered across the room.

Rhys was positive none of this was here before. “Did you have someone bring all this sh—stuff to you?”

“What else would I use my assistant for?”

The conversation lulled and Rhys relaxed into the cushions. He missed the once-over Jack gave him before standing and collecting the papers from around the floor, throwing them into a messy pile on the table. Rhys listened to the movement, but his eyes were unfocused as he finally was able to feel the throb of pain radiating out from the center of his face and could only think about how much he wanted a cigarette.

Actually, that was something he could resolve right now.

Rhys stood up, walked into his bedroom, and rifled through his dresser until he found the almost empty carton buried underneath his underwear. He didn’t think to put on a shirt before he was walking back out into the living room only to turn into the kitchen once he remembered he didn’t have a lighter anymore. He flicked on the gas stove and hunched over the flame carefully to keep some of the longer strands of his hair away as he lit the cigarette.

Vaughn was going to murder him for smoking in the apartment, but that was going to be a problem for future Rhys, he thought as he turned off the stove and plopped back down into the corner of the couch. He took several, long drags until he noticed that Jack was no longer pulling apart the blueprint holo, but staring at him with a quirked eyebrow.

“What?” He asked with false bravado.

“You know those things will kill you, right?” He asked through a grin that spoke about how much he didn’t actually care about Rhys’s health.

“That’s the plan,” he answered sarcastically, wearing the bravado like armor. It helped that this was the normal response he gave when people commented on his addiction. “You want one?”

“Naw, I have other vices, cupcake,” he continued to grin, heavily implying that those vices were much more carnal in nature.

Rhys couldn’t stop the blush that was most likely staining his cheeks quite visibly.

It was at this moment that the front door opened and Vaughn walked in, whistling to himself; happy as he finished another work day and was going to be able to relax at home with a beer. He didn’t notice that there was company in the living room until after he shut the door and tossed his messenger bag on the floor.

He had finished toeing off his shoes when he saw Rhys. “Hey, you look like cra…” he trailed off as his brain took in the scene.

Rhys was holding a cigarette between his lips, his face was a mix of bruising and blood that was also staining his shirtless-chest. Handsome Jack was sitting next to him on the couch close enough that Rhys’s bent knee was touching his thigh and he had a matching bruise forming on his jaw. There was a collection of official-looking documents and work covering the coffee table, suggesting that Handsome Jack had at least been there for a while.

“—the fuck?” He squeaked.

His best friend leaped up off the couch as if he had been caught in a compromising position. “H—hey, Vaughn, buddy. How’s it…did you just get off work?” He laughed in a high, obnoxious pitch. “What time is it?” He asked, desperately.

Vaughn ignored him completely. “That’s Handsome Jack,” he uselessly pointed out.

“Yes, it is,” Handsome Jack confirmed, standing up to intimidate the small man even more. It was effective as he visibly seemed to cower and glance for a possible exit. Jack looked him over and promptly decided that he wasn’t worth his time. “And don’t bother introducing yourself: I don’t care.”

He shakily nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Rhys was trying to telepathically send signals to Vaughn, but the guy wasn’t even remotely acknowledging his presence, so all Rhys was doing was making strange expressions on his face and subtly directing his hand in a leave motion.

“Good boy,” Jack approved. “Now, since, princess here seems to be having a fit I’m going to go. It has also gotten exceedingly more lame now that who-ever-you-are showed up,” he narrated, heading towards the front door only taking his ECHO with him. Vaughn scrambled to move out of his way as the CEO refused to look up from the series of messages plaguing his ECHO device.

“Don’t you want your—” Rhys called out after him.

“Someone will be by to get it,” Jack answered as he opened the door and left, leaving it hanging wide-open behind him.

His footsteps echoed further and further down the hall as he walked away. It was the only sound that was filtering through the apartment as Vaughn was in mild shock and Rhys was what he could possibly say to the other man that would make sense. It took a good minute for Vaughn to break his stance and move to calmly shut the front door not saying a single thing while he did so.

Rhys was infinitely worried about the prolonged silence. “Vau—”

“What the fuck was Handsome Jack doing here?!” He shouted, all calmness leaving him. Rhys winced at the tone and wasn’t given a chance to answer as he continued to yell and gesture wildly with his arms in utter disbelief. “I can’t—it doesn’t even—why was Handsome Jack in our living room?! And why are you smoking!? And—and why do you keep inexplicably getting punched in the face?!”

Rhys didn’t want to answer any of those questions, because he really wasn’t sure how, so he picked the easiest and ran with it. “I haven’t actually gotten punched in the face before. The last time I was only headbutted, so…”

“That is so far from the point that’s it’s in another galaxy,” he gritted out, frustrated. “What is, no; what are you doing with Handsome Jack in our apartment?”

“There is a possibility that I may,” he paused and tried to fill in the words with a wavy hand gesture. “be friends with him?”

The look Vaughn sent him was so dry as to make deserts jealous. “You’re friends with Handsome Jack? The Handsome Jack; the CEO of Hyperion; the one you have posters of in your room. That Handsome Jack?”

Rhys nodded, taking the last drag of his cigarette and frantically looking at everywhere but at his best friend. Vaughn was once again rendered speechless as he tried to connect the amount of information being thrown at him and then fitting that into his current world view. It wasn’t working and he was stuck halfway through pointing his finger at the object of his frustration in annoyance before giving up and dropping it. There was a long story behind this and judging by Rhys’s state it wasn’t a pretty tale, which meant there needed to be a lot more alcohol present.

He walked over to the kitchen to rectify that, stepping over a discarded bag of frozen peas and a chipped mug to reach the fridge. He pulled out two beers, using a bottle opener attached to the fridge door by a magnet to pop the tops, and then headed back over into the living room.

Rhys was standing where he had left him: arms folded nervously across his chest as he bit at a nail without anything else to satisfy his oral fixation. His shirtless, bloody and bruised state was worrisome, but it wasn’t the worst he had seen Rhys in the past month (at least there weren’t any bullet holes), and figured beer solved most injuries anyways.  
He took one end of the couch and Rhys took the other after a moment of deliberation, clutching the beer bottle to his chest like it was his last lifeline.

Vaughn took a sizable gup, downing half the bottle before saying, “Alright, let’s have it.”

\--

“This better be good, Lisa. I don’t like coming down here, the security department is depressing and stuffy kinda like you actually, huh, never thought about that before,” Handsome Jack said as he slammed open the door to the Head Security Office, tucking his ECHO into his back pocket.

It had only taken him a few minutes to cross Helios from Rhys’s apartment on the [third floor] but he was already regretting have left the comfort on working indoors. As much as he loved to watch his employees, most having just gotten off work, look at him in fear and scramble to move out of his way as he stalked through the public areas, he’d much rather than be pouring over the latest assault rifle blueprints that R&D just sent him yesterday. They had made some decent upgrades and he was looking forward to improving them further with his own brand of unstable genius that resulted in a spike of weapon sales.

Lisa turned as he entered, her back illuminated by one large holographic, blue screen that showed the entire map for Helios. A majority of it was official, having been made as the station was built to represent the original blueprint, but some of it was added after the fact; certain rooms or whole floors drawn in by hand shown by the uneven lines and darker blue color, which the more updated systems had switched to a few years ago.

“Were you busy starting your own Fight Club, sir?” she asked sarcastically, eyeing the bruise on the bottom of his jaw.

“I’m impressed that you can manage to sound both polite and insubordinate at the same time,” he grinned sharply, ignoring her question completely, “it’s truly a gift.”

He joined her next to the screen. She was dressed just a formally as before the only change to her outfit was a patch on her shoulder that marked her as the Head of Security. There were other officers in the room, surrounding them as they worked on personal computers, but they had been trained to ignore everything around them unless told specifically to halt their work.

Jack raised his eyebrow in approval. “You’ve really turned these guys around. The last time I came down here they were playing poker and using their guns as currency.”

Her eyes narrowed at the very idea. “That behavior is no longer being encouraged and the men who dare to waste time like that will be severally re-educated.”

“Ho, oh, you would make excellent third ex-wife material,” he offered through a wide smirk.

“I do make a good spouse, thank you,” she replied in a flat tone, holding up her left hand with a simple gold ring. She turned away to pull up something on the screen and casually added, “At least my wife seems to think so.”

Jack grinned even wider, pulling the edges of his mask taught across his face. He didn’t comment as Lisa typed a few commands into the keyboard that had the screen shifting into a 3D view of the same map.

“This is the most current map of Helios,” she pointed at the fifteenth floor where there was a model of a broken wall, “It’s even adjusted to show the damage done to your office.”

“I can see that,” he growled at the reminder.

Lisa paid little attention to his change in mood. “The bandit you captured hasn’t been very forthcoming in information, but he did have two interesting things on him: the device that kept scrambling our cameras and something that resembles a walkie-talkie.”

“A walkie-talkie? People are still using those things?”

“It has been slightly modified, but that’s essentially what it is,” Lisa confirmed pulling up a diagram of it on a separate screen. “The female bandit also had one of these things on her, but it was destroyed in the blast from the siren-bomb.”

“This would be a hell of a lot easier to talk about if these people had damn names,” Jack complained. “You know what—I’m going to name them, fuck it. His name is now Dumbass and hers is Dead-Bitch because that’s all she is now,” he cackled.

Lisa held in her sigh, accepting her fate as she was forced into following this maniac’s orders and pulled up their official criminal documents for the captured bandits. She filled in their blank name boxes with Handsome Jack’s suggestions and then saved the changes to the Hyperion servers.

Jack nodded his approval. “So, walkie-talkie on Dumbass, why’s it important?”

Lisa turned away from the screen and leaned up against the table that was projecting it so she could talk directly to him. “I told you that I assumed there must be a way they were communicating to each other because the series of attacks was too coordinated and reactionary.”

Jack hummed in agreement and kicked out a chair to sit in.

“But if they were using ECHOs we would be able to use the signals to track their locations; those devices are easily hackable. However, none of the tech guys could find anything. So, I figured they must have been using some type of really high-grade communicators possibly funded by a competitor…until I saw the walkie-talkie.”

“That’s when I realized they had done the opposite: instead of using the latest technology, they used outdated ones, ones that we don’t even bother looking for. Those walkie-talkies were made for communication within close parameters, but with a few minor upgrades they had expanded the range by piggy-backing off of FM frequencies.”

Jack rolled the chair back and forth as he thought. “So, they’re using the radio stations to boost their range, hiding their signal completely.”

“Yes, they can reach any place that gets a radio signal, which is every planet in this galaxy, essentially,” Lisa added, pointing to the upgraded transmitter on the holographic walkie-talkie. “Right now, it’s only able to attach to one specific FM at a time,” she tapped the transmitter and the information on it displayed in dark blue text to it.

Jack scanned the information and snorted in disbelief. “20.3? They’re using the dubstep channel?”

“It’s the most frequently used station on Helios,” she said as if it was a well-known fact.

“I’m assuming you have good news for me and have been able to trace the signal,” he demanded and Lisa confirmed, swiping the walkie-talkie hologram away and replacing it with a screen of code with a few strikes on the keyboard.

Jack leaned forward in his seat and surveyed the code himself. He jumped from line to line, and while the code was a little redundant in places and sloppy, it did work and would easily be able to follow the piggy-backed signal—the problem with using outdated tech was that it was hilariously easy to undermine with the latest software once you knew to look for it.

“I’m in the process of tracing it back to Pandora, but there’s a lot to sift through before we can pinpoint exact locations on the surface. But once that’s done, we’ll be able to root out the cult leaders that are holding up down there and giving the orders…”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ in there,” Jack commented.

Lisa took away the code so the map filled the entire hologram displayed above the table. “I decided to focus on determining if there were any more bandits on board Helios, figuring we should clean house first and then expand to Pandora second,” she hesitated. The stumble in her speech had Jack looking at her with trepidation. “It was fairly easy to track the 20.3 FM piggy-backed signal on Helios, but the result was something that I wasn’t expecting.”

She typed two keys and the map was immediately filled with hundreds of orange dots, scattered throughout every floor of Helios.

Jack stood up from his chair, stepping forward in disbelief as he kept losing count through the sheer amount displayed on the screen.

“Each dot represents an individual who has received or transmitted information from a walkie-talkie on the 20.3 FM frequency to others on the same station—the amount totals to approximately 246 cult members residing on Helios,” Lisa summarized in a tone that was a little shaken.

\--Two Days Later--

Rhys stood in front of the only full-length mirror in their apartment, which was in Vaughn’s room and adjusted his tie. His fingers pulled the knot, centering it so that it fell perfectly in line with the row of buttons on the black dress shirt underneath. Once it was where he wanted it, he folded the edges of the collar over the tie around his neck, checked that the shirt was fully tucked into the deep, navy blue pants. He turned and twisted in the mirror, making sure that the suit was still tailored to fit him; every piece just a little too tight, but it would work. He then stepped forward and tenderly touched the bruised area around his nose; it didn’t look too bad, the purple was fading and with the little bit of concealer he had used, it was almost invisible unless he was standing under direct light.

It was as good as it was going to get.

He sighed and leaned over to grab the suit jacket from where it was laying on Vaughn’s bed and tug it on—it was the same deep blue as the pants, made even darker by the black dress shirt, tie, and pocket square. The only other pop of color was the cufflinks: solid gold and a gift from his mother when he got accepted into Eden-5 University (he wore them with every suit).

“You ready?” Vaughn called from the living room.

He gave himself one last look over with the full outfit before answering back, “Yeah,” leaving Vaughn’s room and closing the door behind him.

The living room had been transformed over the past few hours. All the furniture had been pushed closer to the front door, crowding the right corner of the room, opening up the space. The coffee table was now near the kitchen and was lined with plastic cups, and bottles of alcohol that didn’t need to be kept cool. The ones that needed to be iced were placed in several coolers scattered around and the more expensive bottles were stored in the fridge, which common courtesy dictated that guests didn’t rifle through without permission.

Vaughn was in the kitchen, setting up anything that would be needed to make any type of mixed drink someone could want. He was dressed in a forest, green suit, wearing a new pair of black-rimmed glasses and his hair was styled.

“You really want that AWP title don’t you?” Rhys joked, getting uncomfortable flashbacks to his first years in college.

Vaughn looked up from counting limes. “Accounting deserves it; those pretentious real estate winos don’t know anything about hosting.”

“I don’t think our apartment can hold all of accounting,” Rhys muttered.

“That’s why I’ve,” he began, stopping to heave two bags on ice into the freezer, “talked to the neighbors and procured their apartments as well—this entire block is the after party. Even though the majority of people coming to the after party aren’t even invited to the Charity Auction, so it’s just a regular party, I guess for them.”

Rhys silently agreed, before him and Vaughn had become associates and were actually invited to the important charities and balls, they partied with the rest of the workers simply using the excuse that there was a big party happening somewhere to hold their own.

It was almost a tradition at this point and always resulted in several camera rolls of blackmail footage.

Vaughn had put the finishing touches on the kitchen and grabbed both of their invites off of the counter, tucking them under his arm as he slipped into his dress shoes. Rhys opened the front door and waited for Vaughn to follow him, the shorter man handing Rhys his invite as he passed.

The room was a short walk to the elevator and soon they were waiting for it to arrive.

“You ready to attend your last Charity Auction?” Vaughn asked.

Rhys shrugged. “Maybe I’ll be back someday.”

“Damn right, you will,” he echoed with a punch to Rhys’s shoulder. The elevator dinged open and they both stepped in, joining a few other people dressed for the Auction or just a night out. “What’d you tell Darren?”

The tale that Rhys had told him a couple of days ago after Handsome Jack left started with just his interactions with the CEO himself, but devolved into a confession about everything that he had been going through in the past month. This included his feelings about Darren, his lies that he told, and his ultimately complicated relationship with the CEO of Hyperion. It was a lot to take in and it ended with Vaughn looking Rhys a bit differently than he had before—he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Nothing,” Rhys admitted. “I called him yesterday and told him I was busy with stuff today. He’s super busy with some project in his department, so he didn’t have time to dissect that flimsy lie.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

They exited the elevator on the 19th floor along with one other person who apparently worked in R&D judging by the phone conversation they were loudly having, which led to both friends turning to each other and rolling their eyes in mutual annoyance.

Most of the official Hyperion mandated events were held on the 19th floor, and it was built with the level of opulence that one would expect from a major, inter-galactic corporation to flaunt. There were only four rooms on the whole floor each marked by double doors labeled with names such as _The Foundation Room_ , _The First Ballroom_ , _The Second Ballroom_ , and _The Grand Hall_. None of them really varied in theme as the whole floor was made out of golden, hall-vaulted roofs, white marble floors, and glittering walls lined with ancient oil paintings worth millions. It was made to show off the amount of revenue that Hyperion brought in under Handsome Jack and it always managed to make Rhys catch his breath when he saw it.

The Charity Auction was traditionally held in The Foundation Room, which was known for its sprawling indoor fountain and a wall that mimicked a waterfall. The entrance was left open letting guests filter in an out as they pleased after their invitation was checked by a well-dressed woman marking off attendees on a tablet.

After they had handed over their invites, both friends bee-lined for the open bar where they ordered the top-shelf liquors without worrying about having to pay for them.

“Are you actually going to bid on anything this year?” Rhys asked Vaughn once they had their drinks.

“Depends if there’s anything good,” he said, gesturing Rhys forward to view the items being offered.

It wasn’t a true auction. In that, there was no moderator, but rather the items were displayed around the room like a gallery where guests could inspect each and then, if they wanted to bid on it, they would enter an amount into the screen beneath. The employee at the end of the night that had the highest bid got the item and all the proceeds supposedly went to projects that built things like schools and hospitals on Hyperion-owned planets. It was designed like this, so the rich associates and heads could still talk while they pretended to be good people by donating money to a company they already worked for, which is why there were crowds of people around a single item as they discussed business and deals.

Rhys had only ever taken home one item it was a small painting that was claimed to have survived one of the first galactic wars and it a fresco of a dead tree surrounded by crows. It was creepy and weird and Rhys had spent a ridiculous amount of money to hang it in his room. Normally, he used these events to set up future connections like most associates did and rarely got a chance to actually care about donating money.

However, this year he was a lowly janitor and didn’t have to worry about talking to specific people that could enhance his career—another thing he wasn’t sure if he was happy about.

“What the hell is this?” Vaughn asked as they stood in front of a full-sized statue made of some type of pitch, black material.

Rhys titled his head to the side to get a different angle. “I think its two lizards.”

“Isn’t that a wing?”

“No, that’s an arm.”

“It has webbing!”

“Maybe they’re amphibious lizards?”

“The description has to—holy fuck, it’s 6 million dollars. Let’s leave before I accidentally break it or something,” Vaughn whispered and scurried away and Rhys followed him, knocking back his drink and placing it on a passing waiter with a tray.

A second waiter immediately approached with a tray filled with flutes of champagne and Rhys snagged two, emptying the first in a gulp and placing it back on the tray with a wink. He caught up to Vaughn at the next item down, talking to another associate from accounting. His friend noticed his drinking but didn’t comment as Fran discussed the latest real estate figures with him.

Rhys decided to walk around them, not the least bit interested in the conversation and continued to walk the path for the charity items. He filtered past groups of workers talking around pieces or simply standing around; he also continued to keep his hand filled with champagne.

By the time he reached the end where the big priced items were held, he was well on his way to buzzed. The most expensive items were held at the end of the hall where the fountain was located overlooking a series of arched windows.

He had forgotten that this was usually where the heads of departments hung out.

He was peering at a sculpture that was made out a rough material depicting a woman holding a child, but her arms were muscular, her dress torn and frayed, and her face tired. It was making his heart do weird things in his chest and all the sudden, he very much wanted to leave when a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder, not letting him move.  
“I didn’t know they let janitors into the Charity Auction,” Vasquez said conversationally into his ear.

Rhys jerked his head away from the hot breath of his former colleague, but the hand was doing a good job of keeping him from moving far. He could dislodge him, but it would probably make a scene, which was something that Vasquez knew he wouldn’t do.

“I didn’t either, but I was sent an invitation so I decided why not,” he answered, hiding his increasing nervousness with another sip.

“They should probably look into that; we can’t have the gutter rats infiltrating our parties.”

“They let you in here, didn’t they?” Rhys snapped.

Vasquez was easy to anger and the comment had him spinning Rhys around in a sharp movement. Rhys smirked lazily in momentary victory, “Did that hit a little too close to home, Vasquez?”

His face was furious; the anger making his cheeks blotchy underneath the thick beard. His hands shook with it and Rhys began to feel that same high he did that day in the bathroom right before the larger man had punched him.

His jaw worked with unformed words before settling into something hard and steely. When he spoke his voice was deceitfully calm. “You know, I was planning on waiting to tell you this because I wanted it to be a big reveal where I had the time to enjoy it, but I think that this actually might be the best time since you’re in such a good mood, Rhysie.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion and his gut churned at the nickname. “What are you talking about?”

Vasquez answered by gripping his arm and spinning him once again, this time to forcing Rhys to look out over the packed Foundation Room while Vasquez rested both hands on his shoulders as he stood behind. His gaze filtered over the employees until he saw the man of the hour, Handsome Jack, finally arrive, walking through the double doors without looking at anyone and keeping his eyes up and distant. The buzz of conversations lowered as he entered and headed straight for the bar where he ordered a drink from a nervous bartender.

“Go about your lives, ladies and germs,” he ordered in a light tone after taking the first sip of his drink. It took a few minutes for the sound of chatter to reach the level it was at before he entered. Despite that, though, everyone still kept their eyes on him as moved through the crowds talking to random workers here and there.

Rhys followed his every move and for the first time, he was stuck wondering if he would rather be Handsome Jack or simply be the guy next to Handsome Jack. It was a minute change in wording, but Rhys worried that the distinction made all the difference and he was pretty sure that it was most likely the latter.

He didn’t get dressed up with the intention to impress the social-climbing Hyperion associates, vice presidents, and board members.

“I knew from the moment I met you that you wanted to be him,” Vasquez commented, bringing Rhys’s thoughts ground to a halt. “It was obvious that you thought everyone here was beneath you; it was cute. But it was also made you annoying, which is why I got rid of you the moment I led programming.”

Rhys rolled his eyes, still tracking Jack. “Is this the part of the movie where the evil villain divulges all of his nefarious plans?”

“No, this is the part where I explain why I got you fired, but we can just skip to the end if you’re bored,” Vasquez revealed through a wide smile.

“W—what?” He wasn’t fired, he was transferred that wasn’t—

Vasquez leaned in and whispered. “The janitorial thing really didn’t teach you enough humility as I learned as a few days ago, so I talked to the head of the department and said I wanted to file a formal complaint against you and your violent behavior after you assaulted me in the bathroom, but he just said it would be easier to fire you.”

Rhys had blacked out before, it was a sensation that he was all too familiar with and so were the symptoms that hit right before he would fall: tunneled vision, ringing ears, and labored breathing. On second thought, he might be having a panic attack.

Vasquez stepped into his blurring vision and pushed a piece of paper into Rhys’s chest, forcing the younger man to grab it before it fell to the floor. “I wanted it to be official so I had him sign an old-fashioned letter saying that ‘Employee-2246 has been terminated as an employee of Hyperion Corporation’ or something like that, I don’t remember the wording exactly but that’s why I got a copy for you—so you can read it yourself,” he added in a mean sense of joy.

Rhys could barely hear him above the clamor of noise in his head. The words were filtering in, but couldn’t grasp their meaning; everything was taking on a strange hue like the Foundation Room had been transported into an abstract painting. Distantly, he feels that he might have dropped his champagne glass, but he doesn’t know because all he can think is that he needs to leave.

He stumbles forward, but a body is blocking his path.

“Jesus, you’re drunk,” the familiar voice of Handsome Jack says and Rhys valiantly attempted to focus. “If you throw up on me I will kill you.”

A lot of the room is blurred but he was able to see what’s directly in front of him pretty clearly: it’s Handsome Jack in his traditional clothes and his assistant, Namayaka to his left. His assistant is whispering something to his boss and there is a fleeting thought in Rhys’s muddled brain that the bruise on Jack’s jaw is gone.

“Jack—”

“Whoa, that’s ‘sir’ to you, peon—no matter how sloshed you are, so let’s try this again,” he ordered and gestured for Rhys to speak again.

Why was he doing this?

Why was Jack treating him like everyone else; why was he pretending that they didn’t know each other?

Rhys’s chest was tight enough that it physically hurt to breathe, “S—sir,” he repeated.

Jack patted him on the cheek. “Good job, kiddo. Now, why don’t you leave before you make more of an embarrassment of yourself and I’ll pretend you didn’t insult me at my own auction,” he offered framed as a suggestion that was really a demand.

Rhys looked in his face for anything, any blip of recognition, but there was nothing—he looked exactly like the Handsome Jack that hung on every poster and holo on the space station: smug and disinterested. Even his assistant wasn’t making eye contact with him. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to move, his body was in a state of hypertension that had every limb locking hard enough to shake from the pressure.

Handsome Jack eyes narrowed as Rhys continued to disobey his orders.

But before he could complain, Vaughn was pushing his way through the crowd that had formed around the scene and he was pulling Rhys away with a quick bow in Handsome Jack’s direction. No one moved, so Vaughn was forced to shoulder through people while steering his taller friend in the direction of the exit with two hands wrapped around his bicep and waist. The people outside paid them little attention since they were the drunker of the bunch and the weight of eyes left once they turned the corner and shuffled towards the elevator.

Vaughn was speaking to him, asking questions in a hurried tone, but Rhys couldn’t comprehend the words as his mind replayed the utter blank face of Jack as he heard Vasquez’s voice repeated the words ‘fired, fired, fired’ over and over again in his mind. He didn’t even really know that he was in an elevator because he felt as if he was still stuck the Foundation Room; in the moment where a piece of paper was crumbled in his hand and where Handsome Jack didn’t even remember his name.

Everything he had built his life upon was gone.

An instance that his mind kept replaying.

He was being bent down; hands were grabbing his shoulders and pushing him into a crouch only to then move to the back of his head, gently pushing it between his knees. He could hear the fanatic voice of Vaughn almost comforting in its familiarity as he tried to remember how to breathe—it was getting easier now that he was protected, hidden by his own body.

“You—breathe—Rhys,” He could hear about every other word, focusing rather on the hand rubbing his back in strong circles. “In, out, in, out, come on, man—scaring me—”

There was an avalanche of sound as the elevator doors opened to their apartment floor where the after-party was already in full swing.

Vaughn cursed.

“Rhys—Rhys!” He yelled, bending to Rhys’s level and making his friend look at him in the eye. “Can you hear me?”

His throat was too tight to speak; he weakly nodded.

Vaughn looked terrified. “We’re going to go to Yvette’s place and you can relax there, but I need to get my ECHO so I can call her—it’s in my room. So, you’re going to wait right outside this elevator and I’ll be right back, okay?”

A hand underneath his chin forced him to keep eye contact with Vaughn. He nodded his understanding and his friend pulled him to his feet and led him out of the elevator, leaning him against a wall nearby. He patted Rhys on the shoulder one time, before hurrying down the hallway and disappearing into the crowd after a few yards.

The hall was dark only illuminated by the flashing lights that escaped the open doors of the individual apartments. People lingered in the hall, dressed as if they were at a club, holding plastic cups and talking loud over the pounding music. The bass was hurting his head and he attempted to distance himself from it by pushing further into the corner of the wall.

His eyes lazily tracked the movements of random people, but the distraction helped to even out his breathing and simply left him exhausted. He left as if his body had been hit by a truck and he could easily fall asleep on the floor right where he was standing if not for the deafening amount of noise blaring through the entire floor.

A woman in a tight dress stumbled out of one of the closer apartments, wiping the white powder from her nose and falling into another woman who was giggling as she caught her. They both disappeared into another apartment a second later and no one paid them any mind.

Rhys was pulled like a magnet forwards.

He didn’t even really think about it—only wanting to escape the endless repetition of failure that was plaguing his mind.

The oblivion of a dangerous high calling to him; despite, the wrecked state he was in mentally and physically. There was nothing more that he wanted than to forget the entire night and knew that adding a drug-induced euphoria would have him floating as long as he maintained it. He fell through the place the girls had left; an exact replica of his own apartment and spotted a baggie already laid out on the kitchen bar. He weaved ungracefully through the dancing and swaying bodies until he reached it—there wasn’t much left.

So, he dumped the rest of it out, using a card left close by to cut the lines and then lowered his head.

It rushed through his system and for the first time since Vasquez had approached him, he felt as if he could breathe.

The rest of the night passed by in a series of flashes:

Overheating and tugging off his suit jacket—

Being surrounded by swaying bodies—

Being handed a drink—

A man pulling off his tie—

Throwing up in a bathroom—

Stumbling back into the elevator—

—breaking open the door to the Programming Department with a solid twist of his cybernetic arm and entering the darkened workspace—walking past cubicle, after cubicle, after cubicle until he reached the very back and forced his way into the head of programming’s office.

The glow from Elpis cast the dark room in shades of purple and red, giving it an ominous underwater feel. Rhys sat down with his back to the window and stared at the desk placed in the direct center of the room. He had never it seen from this angle before, he had never been behind it, always standing in front and answering to the man that called it his.

The high was starting to wear off—he could tell because the sadness was pushing past the happy haze that had been overshadowing everything in his mind for the past uncountable amount of hours.

And now as it was fading, he was left with nothing.

He was an ex-Hyperion janitor with no prospects, sitting in a room that would never be his.

He could sit behind the desk though; just one time.

He pushed himself to his feet, using the window behind to propel upwards. His body was still fairly uncoordinated, but that could have been from a number of things and it took him swaying a few times from left to right until he was able to walk straight. He gripped the back of the chair once he was close enough, tugged it out, and dropped down into it with all of his weight. The leather smoothed under him and he ran his hands over the smooth texture of the desk, stretching as far as he could reach until his head could rest comfortably on its surface. He kept that position, turning his head sideways and looking at the random collection of items on the desk: a paperweight in the shape of a golden ‘H’, a couple of ball point pens, a flat-screen computer, and two picture frames.

He sat up so he could pick one up.

It was Vasquez with a woman and two little girls; a family picture. They were somewhere with a lot of green, it must have been taken during a vacation or trip where they went off station. They looked so happy.

“I figured that I’d find you here,” Hugo Vasquez said, his words a little bit slurred as he approached Rhys. “I wanted to make sure that I sent you off with a—a good farewell.”

Rhys jerked up out of the seat, laying the picture down by his hand.

“I mean, I’d also come here if I was you; pretend to be a king for a night,” he laughed, the tone grating on Rhys’s nerves and pounding brain. “You should’ve—have seen your face when I handed you that paper and then, then just when I thought the night couldn’t get better, you get berated by Handsome Jack in front of everyone!” He was shouting by the end, leaning up against the front of the desk and wheezing.

Rhys traced the features of this man, the one that had hated him from the beginning and finally understood that everything bad that has happened to him since joining Hyperion was because of Hugo Vasquez. This was the man that had made it his mission to ruin any career that he might have earned just because he was intimidated by Rhys’s drive to succeed. If Hugo Vasquez didn’t exist, Rhys would be Head of Programming; if Hugo Vasquez didn’t exist, Rhys wouldn’t have been demoted to janitor; if Hugo Vasquez didn’t exist, Rhys wouldn’t have humiliated himself in front of Handsome Jack—

—he wouldn’t have been left with nothing.

It was his fault.

All of it.

He was still laughing when Rhys blinked back hot tears, breathed in a type of cold rage he had never felt before and without a second thought, grabbed the golden paperweight and slammed it into the side of Vasquez’s head with a horrible crunching sound.

The man staggered backward from a mixture of the blow and the alcohol coursing through his veins, clutching the side of his face stained with a pained shout. He wasn’t even given a moment to right himself before Rhys was crawling over the desk, knocking the picture frame to the floor with a crack, and slamming the paperweight against the opposite side of the larger man’s face in a backhand motion.

His whole body jerked to the side with the force of the hit, blood splattering into the air.

Rhys swung again, landing another hit on the already shattered cheekbone.

Vasquez dropped to the floor, his vision swimming and filled with blood that dripped from his temple. He blindly tried to move backward to escape, but Rhys was on him with a growl and bringing down the improvised weapon once, twice, three times. Until there was blood, skull, and brain matter staining his shirt, the paperweight, and carpeted floor beneath; until his arm was burning with the exertion and he was forced to stop.

He was panting when the paperweight dropped from his hand, landing on the floor with a dull thud followed by absolute silence.

He stared at the place where Hugo Vasquez’s face used to be and felt nothing. He pushed himself off the body and clamored to his feet, breathing loud in the dark quiet of the room and took in the mess he had made with little comprehension of what he had done.

He felt powerful; invincible.

He had won.

And the victory felt incredible.

The cocktail of drugs, booze, and adrenaline had his whole body shaking; it made him walk in jerky, twitching movements as he left the office and the body behind. His mind was racing, jumping from one thought to the next but since he had solved one problem this night, his thoughts kept circling back to the other injustice done to him. This carried his feet across Helios to the private elevator on the 15th floor that only took authorized personnel to the 20th—he doesn’t remember the number of people he passed or how long it took until he was standing in the foyer of Jack’s floor.

He only paused long enough to find Handsome Jack who was standing in the center of the living room and staring at a holographic screen that took up the entirety of the back wall, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. He turned as soon as he heard the elevator doors open, expecting someone else and surprised to find Rhys already closing the distance between them looking with unhinged determination.

Jack only had enough of a moment to take in a single breath before Rhys fisted a metal hand into his shirt and slammed him into the closest wall with enough force to rattle his bones. He was about to throw the kid off of him when his eyes took in details: the open-collared shirt, sweat-stained enough to have it stick to his body, the blood splatter running up the length of his neck and spots of his face, the old bruise around his nose, and the hair that had been mused by a bloodied hand running through it.

The flesh hand punched into the wall besides Jack’s head, bringing his inspection to Rhys’s eyes, which were glazed over with intoxication but burning with a wild power that Jack was all too familiar with.

For a moment neither moved.

Jack quirked an eyebrow, encouraging whatever Rhys was going to do to hurry up and do it already.

Rhys could see the mocking expression that Handsome Jack had given him earlier when he humiliated him in front of everyone in the Foundation Room. When he had looked at Rhys in the eyes without a sliver of recognition other than disinterested disdain like he would every other Hyperion employee. When he had unintentionally proven that Vasquez had been right about Rhys being perfect for the role of janitor: unimportant and forgettable.

The fresh pain that accompanied the memories caused his grip in Jack’s shirt to tighten and he wanted to make him hurt, but not in the way that drove his bloodlust against Vasquez.

Rhys tugged Jack closer with a sharp jerk in his shirt, close enough that he would feel the words Rhys spoke. “You’re going to remember me,” he promised through a snarl.

And then he leaned down and kissed Handsome Jack, violently.

There was nothing gentle, romantic, or even sexual about it. It had the same force behind it that had colonizers planting their countries colors into the sands of conquered lands: it was a declaration. A statement that was already filled with the taste of iron even before Rhys bit into Jack’s bottom lip hard enough to bleed.

Jack didn’t hesitate or give any ground as he leaned into the pain, sinking his hand into Rhys’s hair and giving it a sharp yank that forced the taller man to bend. It brought them to a similar height and Jack used it to crowd against the taller man, pushing him back a few steps and forcing their hips flush against each other. Rhys answered with a slide of his tongue, a roll of his hips, and shifting his grip from Jack’s shirt to his shoulder so he could shove him back against the wall, following the movement with his whole body.

That time Jack gasped as the air was pushed from his lungs and the sound had Rhys snapping back into himself just enough to realize what he was doing.  


He tore his lips away and took a few steps back, taking deep, shaky breaths.

He stared at Handsome Jack and thought, _Oh, fuck_.

\--

[Five Years Ago—End of Sophomore Year]

Rhys awoke with another hangover, on another couch, in another stranger’s house. He pushed up off the cheap material and sat up with a long groan, holding his head in both hands and revolting at the taste in his mouth. The light was streaming in bright and hot from another room, signaling it was either morning or the afternoon and he was still planet-side.

That at least meant his car was probably outside.

He got to his feet a few minutes later and stepped over the several bodies of passed out college students scattered around the floor, attempting to find the front door. It ended up being a few rooms down (it was a big house apparently) ignoring the bottles, cups, and random items tossed around and leaving without a backward glance.

The sun hurt and he had to shield his eyes as he stepped outside.

It took him another ten minutes to find his car, parked a couple of streets down with a ticket on the windshield for parking in a red zone. He shoved the paper in his pocket while he unlocked the car door with his fingerprint, sliding into the driver seat with a sigh of relief.

He blindly searched the backseat until he found his ECHO that he always kept in his car to stop himself from drunk-dialing people, and searched through the recent messages.  


There were five missed calls from his mother dating back three days, which meant he had been out since Wednesday. He thought about calling her back, knowing she was going to chastise him about throwing his life away, but also kind of wanting to hear her voice when it started to ring in his hand.

It was an unknown number, but since it was already in his hand, he answered it.

“‘ello?” He rasped, fumbling in his glove box for a pack of cigarettes.

There was a flurry of activity on the other line. “Is this Mr. Rhys?” A woman asked in a formal tone.

“Yep,” he answered off-handedly as he tried to light the recently acquired cigarette between his lips with a silver lighter.

“And you are the son of Ms. Carrie-Anne Mitchell?”

“Yeah, why?”

Even before she said anything, the small pause she took after his answer had him tense; it was one of those instinctual things, but he knew before she said anything that it was bad. “I’m sorry to inform you, but your mother, Ms. Mitchell, passed away last night at 2:28 am at St. Vincent-Dahl Hospital on Eden-4.”

And Rhys’s world crumbled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took 9 chapters but we got to the first kiss, folks! 
> 
> Don't do drugs, kids.


	10. It's Hard to Get Around the Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: Zero's pronouns will be changing!! I purposefully referred to them with masculine pronouns here, because I'm going to give them a self-discovery character arc; I wanted to explore their character and I thought this would be an interesting way to do it :)
> 
> First.5: writing in haikus is hard, so sometimes I cop out and just write their dialogue in 17 syllables instead of 5/7/5
> 
> Second: this chapter and the next one will be a little bit slow in preparation for the next half of this fic where shit gets crazy--I'm setting up stuff so bear with it and enjoy character development and introspection 
> 
> Third: this is the first time I'm writing action so let me know if it's hard to follow or doesn't make sense; I'm not used to writing it. 
> 
> Fourth: ENJOY!

[Pandora—Hallow Fax, Crimson Raider controlled territory] 

“This is so not cool; too many COV bandits; we have to retreat,” the robotic voice of Zero complained in a very human way over the comm as he cut through a female marauder in a quick swipe of a sword. He immediately deconstructed it so he could pull himself up onto the second story railing only to digistruct it to impale another bandit and then shoot another running at him. The bandits’ final grunts of death were easily overshadowed by the overwhelming amount of screams, shouts, gunfire, and overall chaos that was happening in the vicinity. 

Mordecai smirked through his scope at the robot assassin’s tone and words—it was always entertaining to hear their colloquialisms and characteristics come out of his flat, disinterested voice. 

“The number’s right, we’re getting overrun,” he echoed from somewhere up high, never taking his attention away from his scope as he tracked Zero, providing sniper fire when needed through death or simply marking hidden targets in purple slag. Somewhere on the other side of the encampment, Kreig raged through his kin, but his movements were too erratic for Mordecai to aid with cover fire, so he simply wished him luck and focused towards the central structures where the assassin was stationed. 

Mordecai lost him for a beat as he disappeared between the buildings, but found him again as he reappeared, flipping backward off a roof and stabbing a bandit in the back that hadn’t reacted fast enough. A psycho ran up behind Zero as he fluidly moved through the new wave of enemies entering from the south side gate and Mordecai dropped him just as the assassin swung behind, his sword cutting through the already dead body. 

“Your sniping assistance is appreciated, depressed birdman,” Zero said with little inflection, shooting two more bandits with a Tediore pistol and then throwing it towards another where it promptly exploded at their feet, throwing them back into a hut. 

A heavy sigh echoed over the comm as new voice added, “Goddamnit—are all of the civilians out?” Lilith asked, trying to coordinate yet another evacuation as she poured over a series of holographic maps from her position at the base in Sanctuary. 

“I WANT MORE MEAT!” Kreig shouted over the comm, digging his ax into the ribcage of a goliath and then ripping it out to throw into the head of another. An explosion sounded through his comm as a grenade landed at his feet, bounced, and blew up a series of stacked structures to his right. 

“We’ve got one more bus and then that should be all of them,” Mordecai answered as he turned his scope to check on Kreig. He appeared to be fine, since he was already shoving entire pieces of rubble out his way and tackling a nomad, sending his shield clanging across the dirt. 

“Good, head towards Overlook; Axton and Gaige have set up a surprise for any of those COV bastards that follow,” she growled and then in a sentence that evoked her dead boyfriend ended with, “Commander out.” 

Her line clicked off and the comm unit was left with three. 

The next few minutes were filled with silence as each focused on eliminating as many enemies as they could. Zero’s smooth and swift style was backed-up by the accurate and deadly sniper hidden up in the highest buildings in the encampment, while Kreig tore through entire lines of bandits with a voracity of rhino. There were other crimson raiders about, but they were mainly stationed by the buses to defend the civilians boarding and then following them in trucks as they left. 

They fell into a sort of rhythm even though they weren’t fighting side-by-side physically. Zero was pushing closer and closer to the south side gate, driving the COV bandits back when the concrete outer wall to his right exploded inwards. He disappeared within the smoke and debris that reigned down as a 10-foot tall goliath took his place; his body streaked with purple, glowing lines and his eyes emitted the same color. 

“Hm, that’s new,” the sniper commented. 

The monster-goliath roared and tore through another series of buildings in search of any remaining crimson raiders. Mordecai took a few pot shots, testing any weaknesses in the tough skin and keeping its attention away from the buses—it did the trick. The monster was now stomping around the encampment, swatting as bullet continued to pepper any exposed skin; the wide sweeps of his arm were taking out any of the bandits that stood near him and soon the area was cleared except for the monster-goliath, fallen comrades and blood splatters at his feet.

Click—click. 

His magazine was empty, having spent all twelve bullets on distraction. 

He cursed and quickly emptied and reloaded. 

He snapped his sights back on the monster-goliath and watched as it moved its massive, grotesque head from building to building. “Guys, I think it’s smart,” he said with dread as he realized that it was systematically searching for the sniper’s nest. 

A guttural yell came over the ECHO right as Kreig ran through Mordecai’s sights, leaping off the ground to sink his ax into the monster’s chest with a squelch. Purple tinted blood coated the vault hunter, but the wound wasn’t deep enough to stop the monster from picking him up and throwing him through a collection of houses. 

In the next second, Zero reappeared with four shotgun blasts to the monster’s spine and two slashes at the back on his knees while Mordecai hit it twice near the site where Kreig’s ax was buried. It gave a horrendous roar and instead of falling to the ground, it swung behind and backhanded Zero who remained still a millisecond too long and was slammed into a concrete wall with crunch and grunt over the ECHO.

Mordecai felt something akin to fear when Zero didn’t get up. 

“I AM THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!” Kreig hollered as he burst out of the debris pile he was under and body slammed the monster-goliath.

It gave Zero a moment to push to his feet with a small wobble and watch the psycho reclaim his ax only to strike down in the same spot; this time sinking it deeper. The monster made a grab at the vault hunter hanging from his chest, but Zero was there to bring down his sword on the wrist of the outstretched hand hard enough to hit bone. He kept his hands on the hilt, spinning his body to land on its forearm and then fired a series of rounds into the cut, tearing through the rest of tendons to sever the hand completely.  
It dropped with a wet thud and a cloud of dirt. 

Zero followed it to the ground, grabbing Kreig on the way and pulling him away with mechanical strength. 

“Vulnerable: eyes,” the assassin muttered, releasing the psycho once they were a good distance away from the raving monster.

Mordecai cut him off before he could finish his strange pattern of speech, “The last bus has left, but we need to take this thing out—it’ll tear through all of our vehicles.” 

Zero let out a noise close to huff, “I was not finished speaking; hella rude, birdboy.” 

“You’ve been hanging around Gaige too much,” he laughed. 

The monster-goliath picked up severed hand and threw it towards the two vault hunters. They dodged to opposite sides: the assassin rolling up to his feet with a pistol and Kreig stumbling onto one foot, clutching the ax. Mordecai fired and the bullet ricocheted off the back of its head as he tried to force it to turn around so he could get a shot at its eyes. 

It turned, looked up, and then it was staring directly at Mordecai through his scope.

“I’ve been spotted,” he said calmly, despite the increase in his heart rate. He needed to move, but he also had the clearest shot he was ever going to get. He breathed in, out and fired just as the thing leaped halfway across the camp and slammed into the support structure holding up Mordecai’s post. It was dead, but there was enough momentum to send the limp corpse into the buildings and the floor beneath Mordecai’s feet crumbled. 

He must have blacked out because the next thing he remembered is Kreig yelling incomprehensible sentences as he pulled slabs of concrete and rebar off of his body. Zero’s three-fingered hand wrapped around his forearm and tugged him out with a grip strong enough to bruise and grind the bones in his wrist together. But it got him out and he was stumbling out of the wreckage with a worrying wheeze to his breathing and a small limp a few minutes later. 

The monster-goliath was buried under the same rubble, the glowing purple streaks on its body the only part that showed through the pile of four buildings on top of it. 

His vision filled with his sniper rifle as Zero handed it back to him. “You have dropped this; I am sorry, I do not remember the name.” 

“Its Good Girl, GG for short,” he answered through a blood-stained smirk, shouldering the familiar rifle and making his way off the debris pile. 

Zero easily beat him to the ground with precise movements while Kreig leaped and landed ungracefully on the ground. They didn’t have time to rest as another wave of COV bandits were already entering through the south and north gates now that the monster was dead. The group of current and former vault hunters ran towards the garage on the west side, dodging bullets where they could and firing back just to keep the increasing horde back. 

They stepped over the bodies of crimson raiders that littered the ground at the entrance of the garage; Zero having to push a dead woman that was half into a repurposed Bandit Technical out so he could slip into the passenger seat. Mordecai hopped into the driver seat, turning on the car as soon as he could reach the ignition while Kreig crawled up the outside and fell head first through the open roof to sit in the back. Bullets pinged off the metal as the sniper floored it, squealing out of the garage and taking a left sharp enough that there were only two tires touching the ground at one point. 

Zero took out as many bandits as he could as they flooded the encampment; Kreig threw grenade after grenade creating a cacophony of explosions in their wake. 

“We’re out of the compound, headed towards Overlook,” Mordecai updated to Lilith. 

He ran over a nomad, his body rolling under the tire as he sped through the west gate and into the hills. “Take the tunnel,” the siren commanded before giving her own update, “Axton just informed me that the civilians have started to arrive at Outlook and there are quite a few alive, so good job, uh, team.”

“Got it; we’re about ten minutes out—shit!” He exclaimed, jerking the wheel as a thresher popped out of the ground directly in front of their car and forced them off-road. He was forced to serve around trees, brushes, and more threshers as he careened over the green hills of the Highlands; gunfire continuously following them as they drove. 

Zero was now hanging out from the passenger door, clearing the path of any Pandoran creature and COV bandits that attempted to get in front and cut them off. It ended in Mordecai driving over corpses like speedbumps or having to avoid entire vehicles that rolled as the assassin took out their tires with precision hits. 

“PLUCK OFF WINGS AND BUILD A TOWER TO THE SKY!” Kreig warned just as Mordecai heard the screeching of rakks.

Mordecai crashed the car through a stream, splashing water through the interior, and drifted back onto the official highway just as a Badass Rakk descended onto the windshield. It blocked out his sight of the road completely with its body before plunging its talons through the glass and shattering it. He had to let go of the wheel to shield his face as talons and a beak clawed any flesh it could reach, digging deep into his forearms and hands. 

A gun fired directly next to his ear that had him flinching to the side just as the car began to turn without his steering. He opened his eyes just as the headless body of the Badass Rakk slid off the hood of the car thanks to Zero who was leaned over, his pistol leveled by Mordecai’s shoulder and his hand on the steering wheel, keeping it on the highway. 

“Thanks,” the sniper said, taking the wheel back ignoring the ringing in his ears. 

Zero gave a short nod before turning his attention back to the passenger side, taking out two more COV trucks in quick succession. Mordecai rapidly took in the details around them to determine where they had ended up after the series of detours and was glad to see the familiar mountain ranges that only appeared as you drove deeper into the Highlands. 

“Gaige,” he called over the comms. “We’re going to be approached the tunnel in less than a minute, aaaaand we’ve got company,” he said as he followed the bend of the highway and was able to see the tunnel built into the hills in the distance. 

“I can see you, my dudes! Just keep coming and I’ll show these bastards what a goddamn third-place science fair winner can do!” Gaige’s girly voice crackled over the ECHO; the sounds of Deathtrap fighting could be heard in the background. 

Mordecai pushed the pedal as far as he could to the floor and drove straight down the middle of the two lanes. The wind blew harsh through the broken windshield, whipping his hair and making his eyes water but all he needed to do was keep driving straight. A grenade exploded on his left close enough to feel the heat through the metal exterior of the car and pushing it sideways from the force, but he was used to driving through these circumstances that he let the wheel go, letting the car drift instead of over-correcting and spinning out. 

He had his hands back on the wheel, turning back to center just as they were engulfed in the darkness of the tunnel. Kreig still hung out of the roof while Zero closed the passenger door, sliding back into his seat and taking a moment to reload the several guns attached to his person. 

Gaige stood at the very end, a spot of bright color amid the grey of the asphalt as her robot floated behind her, holding a dead skag in its arms like a stuffed animal. She was holding out her arm with the universal hitchhiker symbol with her thumb out with a manic grin on her face. 

Mordecai broke out of the tunnel with the COV bandit trucks at his heel and the reintroduction of sunlight. He drove as close to Gaige as he could so she could grab hold of the caged windows with her cybernetic arm to catch a ride. 

“This is going to be tots awesome!” She screamed over the wind, holding up a donator in her free hand for them to see; it even had a comically large red button to push.  
What followed was the complete destruction of the tunnel, large enough that it vibrated the ground underneath the tires of the car like an earthquake, destroying all the COV bandit cars that were following them in an avalanche of fire, stone, and earth. 

Gaige’s cackle was louder than the secondary explosions that followed. 

\--

[Helios] 

He should have been making a plan of escape, figuring what he could possibly say to justify his actions, but all he was noticing was that the rise and fall of Jack’s chest was faster than normal and with that came the smaller details: the wrinkles in his shirt from where Rhys had grabbed him, the looseness of his collar, the bruise on his jaw, the bloody red on his lips. The darkness of the room had the blue from the holographic screen reflected across the sharp features of his face, emphasized by the mask and adding the same effect that had descended in the programming office: underwater and ethereal. 

The more rational parts of his brain were beginning to surface as the drugs and alcohol slowly filtered out of his system and it was leaving him confused and terrified—the night had felt like a fever dream, but one that hadn’t quite finished yet. 

He chanced to make eye-contact with Handsome Jack who, up until this point, was still leaned up against the wall watching him. Rhys couldn’t make out the expression on his face and honestly, he didn’t know what he would have wanted to see.

He didn’t know why he fell off the bandwagon and took those drugs.

He didn’t know why he went back to the programming department.

He didn’t know why he killed Vasquez.

And he doesn’t know why he kissed Jack. It was frustrating enough (especially after the night he has had) that he was seconds away from crying. He needed to leave and retreat; he couldn’t breakdown here, not now and not in front of Jack—he shouldn’t have come here, he’s ruined everything. 

He took a step back and right before he turned his head away, he saw the first genuine emotion on Jack’s face: it was anger in the form of narrowed eyes, pursed lips, and a tightening of his jaw. It carried his feet forward and in two strides he had a hand wrapped around Rhys’s bicep, turning him back and then pushing him further into the room with a bit off, “Nope.” 

Rhys had to throw out a backward hand to stop himself from falling on his back to the ground and ended up grabbing the edge of the couch; his metal fingers digging into the leather material and ripping it. His torso was half twisted hovering over the cushions when Jack shoved him down with a solid hit to the center of his chest. He hit the furniture with a grunt and a protest on his lips, knowing he deserved to get punched for his actions, but still keyed up enough to think he could fight back.

“I’m—”

His words and breath caught in his throat as Jack’s lips once again found his own. 

It was immediately different from the first one. 

It was just as harsh, just as mean, but the slide of lips was more sensual, slower and there was a spike of fear that Rhys didn’t feel when he had been the one to initiate it. He was at the disadvantage this time, bent sideways and half-leaned, half-sitting on the couch with only his cybernetic arm keeping him from lying flat on his back against the cushions, and Jack looming over him. 

Despite all of this, he felt his whole body pushing up into the kiss. 

A warm hand traveled up his neck with a soft touch, leaving goosebumps in its wake before it grabbed his chin in a vice. It hurt and Rhys found himself groaning for reasons he wasn’t sure of and a hot tongue was invading his mouth for a moment before Jack pulled back. The separation of lips had Rhys opening his eyes only to be pulled forward by the iron grip on his chin, forcing his flesh arm to drop onto the couch to hold up his body. 

Jack’s lips were millimeters away from his own, his eyes ferocious. “Do you remember what I told you the second time we met?” 

Rhys could barely remember his own name. “Jac—” 

Jack sneered, leaning even further over Rhys by bending a knee up on the couch, shoving the younger man’s legs apart. It brushed against the inside of his thigh, and he twisted his body into the pressure fully aware that this was no longer about simply making a statement. 

The fingers dug into his cheeks, pulling his attention back to Jack. “Don’t pussyfoot out of this,” he hissed and then Rhys remembered: Jack had a similar look his eyes then after Rhys had rejected his orders surrounded by the rubble of the interrogation room. He had demanded that Rhys stand with his decision; to not back down. As Jack kissed him again with a sharp bite that had his lips immediately parting, Rhys realized that the look in his eyes back then had been desperation. 

This thought and any others were completely thrown out the window as Jack’s lips trailed down his neck and his knee finally moved up those final few inches. Rhys would have been embarrassed about the noise that tore up through his chest and the snap of his hips if he was in any other state of mind, but the current Rhys simply let his body fall into the sensations. 

The hand that had been wrapped around his chin left at some point to tug his dress shirt free so that Jack could run it up his torso, leaving a hot trail in its wake. Between that and the unrelenting pressure against his crotch, his flesh arm was shaking hard enough that it bent and gave out, dropping Rhys fully onto the couch. Jack naturally followed the movement; Rhys could feel him smirking against his collarbones at the change in position. He was more vulnerable like this, but at least his arm was now free to touch. He didn’t hesitate to trail a hand up Jack’s muscular thigh and then cup him through his jeans. 

The man let out a puff on air against the top of his shoulder. “Rhys,” he hummed and then bit down hard. 

Rhys moaned both at the sensation at the sound of his name falling out of Jack’s lips, prying open his eyes to watch as the older man mouthed his way back up his neck like he was trying to memorize the taste of his skin. And all of a sudden, Rhys wanted nothing more in life than to touch him, to lay his hands across Handsome Jack’s flesh and claim him as his own. It was something primal that had him pulling his face away from Jack so he could drag his teeth across the edge of the mask where it met at the bottom his jaw, right over the bruise he had left. 

Jack laughed low in his throat; it rumbled through his body and into Rhys’s. 

Someone cleared their throat. 

The introduction of external noise brought with it the remembrance of the world outside of Jack’s lips, body, and heat and with it came the cold, dread of everything Rhys had done to get to this point in time. He jerked his body away, pulling his hand back to himself, then sinking further into the couch; Jack practically growled in annoyance as he turned to see who had entered. 

Namayaka stood in the foyer, right at the edge of the carpet with Lisa right behind him. She took two steps in front of the assistant and was clearly the one to have interrupted them. “You had your assistant fetch me, sir?” the question of why was implied by her tone. 

Jack rolled his eyes and pushed off of Rhys, adjusting his clothes and smoothing back his hair and pretending that he hadn’t just been vigorously making out on his couch. “Yeah, I did, twenty minutes ago; I expect promptness, sweetheart,” his voice was little sharper than normal, making the nickname feel more like an insult than a playful jab. 

She did not cower. “It is four fifteen in the morning on a Saturday. I was asleep and off the clock and yet, I am here because your assistant wouldn’t leave my apartment.” 

While she spoke, Rhys took the opportunity to collect himself, righting his clothes and standing up a good few feet away from Jack. He belatedly realized that his cybernetic hand had dug four matching tears into the upholstery and tried to inch a little closer into order to hide it from anyone else in the room. Judging from the narrowed eyes of Namayaka, he was unsuccessful. 

He heard Jack volleying something in return, but everything started to sound like it was happening underwater—it was…peaceful; nice. He let the sounds wash over him and tried to not to think too hard about what had happened: tears, blood, the crunching of bones. His lips were still tingling from the pressure of Jack’s and it felt just as violent as driving the metal paperweight into Vasquez’s skull. He swayed with ebb and flow of the noise happening around him and pretended, for just a moment, that he wasn’t who he was. 

“—ys?” 

He didn’t realize he had closed his eyes until he opened them at hearing his name. The room was just as dark, Lisa and Namayaka where distant blurs, but Jack was perfectly in focus, standing right in front of him with concealed worry on his face. 

Rhys reached out a hand to ask him what was wrong, but he never completed the motion.

The blurriness took over his whole vision and the last thing he saw was the gleam of metal from Jack’s mask before all his senses shut down and he collapsed. 

\--

[14 Years Ago—Eden-4]

Bullhead Dahl Mining Town was perpetually covered in a haze of grey smoke that filtered out from the miles and miles of mines that lined the majority of the inhabitable surface of the planet. It housed a form of Titanium that only existed in a series of ten planets referred to as the Moon Ring as they orbited a moon rather than a sun. However, the planets did get light from a neighboring sun, rendering half the planet habitable and the other half not; the space in which the moonlight and the sunlight meet had caused a series of tectonic plate shifts over geological time spans that formed this unique Titanium metal. Atlas and Dahl had fought ruthlessly over the areas, but once Atlas handed over its company to Hyperion, Dahl was the only armed company left and claimed all ten planets at its own, and the metal became a unique component to their rocket launchers, SMGs, and grenades. 

Naturally, towns sprouted up around the mines in order to house the miners and workers that were needed to mine the metal, which led to the creation of Bullhead Dahl Mining Town on the planet of Eden-4. Its residency is counted at over 5,000 the majority of which are miners and the rest either being management or the few workers needed to run the bar, restaurants, and stores in the town. 

The constant proximity to the mine had led to a decrease in usable workers as the children the inhabitants had, which Dahl had planned on using as future workers, were born more often than not with birth-defects. These ranged from deafness, muteness, missing limbs, extra limbs, autoimmune disorders, and a never-ending list of diseases from the toxic air and environment. 

Rhys happened to be one of the children, tenth generation on Eden-4, to be born without a right arm. 

It took ten years (working overtime and weekends) for his mother to save up enough to pay for a cybernetic surgery to replace his arm with an older Dahl model. 

“It’s heavy, mom,” the nine-year-old complained after they got home from spending the past three days in the hospital. He clung to his mother’s hip not because he ended it to walk, but because he found comfort in her presence. Everyone that lived in this town smelled like smoke, but she had this underlying scent that he associated with home and it had him burying his face into the folds of her jacket as she unlocked the front door and ushered him in.

“And it looks funny,” he said, staring at the dull brown and green plates and gears that made up his new arm. There was a bit of delay between him wanting to move his fingers and them actually moving; he was too young to put a name to the feeling but it was disconcerting enough to be uncanny. 

“It’ll make you stronger, Rhysie,” his mother responded walking the two steps it took to reach the kitchen. “It’ll give you an advantage over people; you need to take them where you can.” 

He frowned, swinging his new arm back and forth and feeling as it pulled at the underdeveloped muscles in his shoulder. “But it hurts,” he mumbled, following her into the kitchen as she began to cook up beans and toast. 

“It’s just sore, honey.” 

He sat down at the dining table (it wobbled slightly to the left) and gingerly laid his new arm on top. He practiced with moving the individual digits and twisting his wrist and watching the underlying mechanics shift with the motion. It made quite a bit of noise and it reminded Rhys of the sounds that the mining drills would make that could almost constantly be heard from anyone who was standing outside. 

He was another piece of Dahl tech. 

His mom joined him at the table a few minutes later, setting a bowl of beans and a slice of toast in front of him. He reached for the spoon with his [right arm], but his mom reached across the table and pushed it back down. 

“You need to get used to using your new arm.”

“Huh? I do everything with my left hand,” Rhys pointed out. 

“Yes, but this arm,” she tapped the metal plate that would be his forearm with a callous finger, “needs to be just as efficient as your other one. It’ll help to make it yours,” she said, and Rhys didn’t understand but like with most children, automatically assumed their parent was right and followed the command. 

He winced at the soreness from the surgery and the extra weight added to his skeleton as he lifted the arm up off the table. It took him a few tries to get the fingers wrapped around the spoon, there wasn’t much dexterity in the model he was given and with sharp, jerky movements raised the spoon to his lips. The amount of concentration and pain that it took left him exhausted, making him take breaks in between bites before he continued to eat. 

It hurt less and less as he used it though. 

And his mother’s encouraging expression had him speeding up the movement until he was using the arm just like the one he was born with.  
He finished the beans and felt as if he accomplished some huge task.

She smiled at her son as he pushed the empty bowl away and ate the slice of toast. “In a few years, we’ll able to buy you some paint and you can color it anything you want, okay?”

“‘K, mom.” 

\--

Rhys could taste the smoke on his tongue as he woke up to the artificial simulation of morning light on the couch in his own apartment. Unlike the other times he had passed out there was no moment right as he woke up where he didn’t remember what had happened, a moment where he was blissfully blank; his eyes had opened and everything was at the forefront of his mind.

In horrific, terrifying, and confusing detail. 

He doesn’t get a moment where he is unaware of his actions. 

Of what he has become:

A murder.

A druggie.

A cheater. 

He pushed himself to sit up on the couch and relished in the pain of the migraine that throbbed through his temples; he deserved every iota of pain that his body gave him. He lowered his face into his hands, leaning over his knees and waited for the tears that he knew wouldn’t come—it was too late for self-pity. He couldn’t justify feeling guilty about murdering Vasquez, because it had felt nothing short of triumphant when he smashed all of his pent up rage into the side of his face. He couldn’t justify feeling guilty about cheating on Darren, because it felt so easy to kiss Jack and mean it. 

If he said he regretted any of it, he would be lying to himself. 

And that made it all the worse: he did awful things that he couldn’t find in himself to regret, not in the moment and not now. 

That didn’t mean he wasn’t still absolutely terrified of what he could possibly be becoming (or maybe it’s more of discovering what he really was to begin with).

He viciously rubbed his hands over his face and stood up from the couch with a vocalized sound of frustration, forcibly pushing his existential crisis on the backburner. This spiral of thought would get him nowhere and it would only lead to him staying cationic on the couch the entire day as he slowly came to realize the extent of his transgressions. 

“You’re up,” Yvette commented, causing Rhys to spin around in confusion until he spotted her sitting at the kitchen table that had been moved across the room for the party. Her face was partially hidden behind a glass of water, but he could still see the serious furrow of her eyebrows, forming wrinkles around her eyes. She wasn’t looking at him, but over him and the lack of eye-contact was disconcerting. “Vaughn called me last night in a panic saying something about Handsome Jack and the Charity Auction; I rushed down here,” he could tell, she was dressed as if she had rolled out of bed and didn’t bother to change except to throw on an oversized hoodie. “And he said you were having a panic attack and then he handed me this.” 

She slid a piece of crumbled paper across the table, Rhys only realizing it was there when she moved it and immediately recognized the official Hyperion notary seal on the top right-hand corner. She lowered the glass next to it and his manicured fingers danced along with words as if they were written in braille, pausing on Hugo Vasquez’s signature. 

“He fired you,” she stated. 

Rhys swallowed and tasted iron in the back of his throat. 

She looked up from the notice when Rhys didn’t say anything and straight in his eyes; her gaze was steely. “You should probably change out of those clothes before security shows up,” she said in a tone that was slightly judgmental, but about what, Rhys didn’t know. 

He slowly glanced down at his clothes: dried, blood splatters on his dress pants; he touched his shirt and could feel some of it flake off as well even though it wasn’t as visible since the material matte black, unlike the pants. 

“It’s on your face too,” she added in the same tone. 

He walked carefully into the kitchen, his grasp over his limbs was still a little shaky and he stumbled a few times before making it to the sink. He flicked on the tap and run a nearby kitchen towel under it once the water was hot. He didn’t have a mirror, so he simply ran the towel over his whole face and once he started he couldn’t stop; he scrubbed viciously at any exposed skin, running it down to his neck where he felt the first stings of pain as it passed over Jack’s various love bites. 

Despite the situation, he felt a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

He probably looked somewhat deranged. 

“Did you know how you got back here?” It was a leading question; Rhys didn’t bother answering as he kept his attention straight ahead at the wall over the kitchen sink. “Handsome Jack carried you.”

He whipped his head towards her in disbelief (a worrying amount of warmth spread through his body).

She was staring directly at him. 

Two quick knocks at the front door had Rhys turning in the other direction, never getting the chance to question her. He wasn’t given the chance to open the door as it was pushed open a second later and two security officers walked in after imputing the override code. They both stayed at the door’s entrance, not actually stepping foot into the premise and the masks they wore removed all identification of identity. 

“Former employee-2466, Rhys,” one said not asking if he was present, but as a statement, as he scanned the room with his ECHO device. “You are suspect in the murder of Employee-831, Hugo Vasquez, and will be placed in custody until further notice. Do not bother resisting it just makes this more annoying for us.”

There was a thought in the back of Rhys’s head that knew this was going to happen. He hadn’t taken planned on killing him, never even thought about it until he heard Vasquez’s mocking laughter and felt the need to do whatever he could in order to get him to stop. This meant that the various cameras set up in the office were still running and they probably had very clear footage of him beating the man to death in HD. 

He dropped the towel in the sink and crossed the room for the security guards to place handcuffs on him that snapped into place as soon as they touched his skin. The metal was cold and heavy as it unfurled around his wrists, pulling them down with the added weight against his thigh. As the second guard placed a hand on his shoulder to guide him out of the room, Rhys threw a final glance at Yvette over his shoulder, but she was back to looking down at the table. 

\--

The light of the morning sun streamed its first beams in through the lounge windows, highlighting the darkness of the living room in yellows and oranges. Jack grumbled at the intrusion of light but was too engrossed in his work to get up and flip the switch that would close the shutters. He was stood in the middle of his living room, watching as hundreds of orange dots moved around a 3-D map of Helios while Lisa sat on the couch, typing away on a borrowed laptop.

“This is a risky plan,” she said without stopping her work.

“I think you mean its damn genius and it’ll get these bastards off my space station faster than you can say ‘cannibalism,’” Handsome Jack retorted, pinging a particular dot with a touch of his finger. It highlighted in a red outline and he followed its movement as it traveled from the 14th to the 10th floor and stopped in a café. 

“I still think that disrupting their FM signal is the next best action.”

“No, that’ll only let them know that we know, which then puts us at a disadvantage and trust me, honey, I’ve spent my entire life making sure I always have the advantage,” he growled at the dot. “This fucker is always hanging out at Greg’s Coffee, why—why?” 

“But then they wouldn’t be able to communicate and we can divide and conquer their forces,” she spoke from a militaristic standpoint as if making a battle plan.

“That might’ve worked in the army, but you haven’t fought the crazies that live on Pandora. I can guarantee that the minute we block their stupid FM signal, they will go into ultimate suicide mode and wreck my station,” he explained with a gesture that Lisa wasn’t watching. “He’s watching the bridge; that’s what he’s doing—he’s probably the reason I was shot there, asshole,” he unhighlighted the dot with an angry stab of his finger. 

Jack’s ECHO rang interrupting the silence in the living room. He blindly reached around the side table next to him until he found it and answered it while still concentrating solely on the map.

“Yeah?”

“Handsome Jack, sir,” the nasal voice of his assistant came through the speaker system. “I’ve been texting you, but you haven’t responded: you have a meeting at 8 with the board of directors.”

“Well, call them and tell them I busy, pumpkin,” he flippantly answered, listening with only half an ear. 

There was a pause. “I can’t. This is the official quarterly meeting and you are legally obligated to attend as the CEO of Hyperion, sir,” he tentatively explained. 

Jack rubbed a tired hand over his face. “Fine, what time is it?”

“The meeting is at 8 am and it is currently 7:14 am, but—”

“Yeah, got it,” The CEO interrupted and then hung up not wanting to hear the grating voice of his assistant any longer. “Ugh,” he voiced as a sigh, realizing he had less than an hour until he had to deal with the annoying money-grabbing, coots that made up the board of directors. 

(He didn’t judge them for the money-grabbing part, but it was annoying when the grabbing was directed at him and his company).

Lisa’s typing had stopped at some point during his conversation, causing Jack to finally look away from the map and watch as she slid the laptop across the coffee table and closed the lid. She stood up from the couch, adjusting the clothes she had thrown on in her haste to get here earlier this morning. 

“If that’s all, I’m going to be going back home,” Lisa said through a concealed yawn. “For the record, I don’t think this plan is going to work, but I’ll implement it if those are your orders.” 

“They are,” he responded instantly and then backtracked. “Look, it’s worked for their other three plans: my assassination attempt, one and two, and then Rhys’s. Both of those failed, which means if we let them just go ahead with whatever high-brain scheme they’ve conducted, we’ll be able to watch it blow up in their faces and collect them up in the aftermath.”

She nodded and then countered just before she left the living room, “And what if their plan is to send as many of their members as they can at you?” 

She turned around enough to see Handsome Jack’s smirk. “Then it’s a good thing I can be in two places at once.” He let her blatant insubordination go as she dramatically rolled her eyes at his statement before walking across the foyer and into the elevator without saying a farewell. 

And then he was alone with sunlight streaming in on his right and darkness encroaching on his left. 

He clicked off the map and walked into the kitchen to make some coffee; if he was going to have to get through this board meeting, he needed at least two cups before the bastards hologrammed in. Flicking up his wrist he saw the display of 7:28 and over the brewing sounds of his coffee pot, he realized that he had to change. His hand tugged at the collar of his shirt that was loose and still held the wrinkles from where Rhys had fisted his cybernetic hand it in and shoved him around. 

There weren’t a lot of moments in his life where he was surprised. He took a certain pride in being able to predict the movements and actions of those around them, ensuring he was always at least two steps ahead of everyone else, but the kid was starting to show that he wasn’t like everyone else. Jack had seen that the minute Rhys had come into his office, trailing behind his assistant, and had disregarded all titles without a thought. 

It had been ages (or exactly one year, his brain supplied) that someone had referred to him as ‘Jack.’

He had resisted the urge to shoot the kid in the face just for saying it and only did so because Rhys had happened to save his life and it felt a little petty to then immediately murder him. The next times, he didn’t shoot him because he has gotten used to hearing his name; liked the way it sounded when he had said; enjoyed being Jack for someone else besides her; wanted to hear him say it all the time, every day. 

Jack brushed his fingers over the bruise left on the side of his jaw: left by Rhys a couple of days ago and kissed by Rhys a couple of hours ago. 

Violence and tenderness; Jack smirked and pushed an index finger into the bruise until it stung, held the pain for a beat, and then dropped his hand. 

The coffee dinged complete. 

\--

[Pandora—Overlook] 

Mordecai drove the smoking truck along the rest of the highway at a slow crawl, because a piece of something from the explosion had taken out one of his tires. He didn’t have to go; he could already see Overlook as it rested on top of a raised hill; the glimmer of shield reflecting the sunlight around it in a protective bubble. He ended up having to park a good distance away from Overlook’s entrance since the dirt hill leading up to the outpost was filled with the buses and vehicles that had gotten there before driven by the crimson raiders and citizens of Hallow Fax that managed to escape. 

Gaige hopped off as soon as he went under 10mph and was already weaving her way through the maze of vehicles with an extra skip in her walk, humming a popular hip-hop song. Kreig followed close behind, shouting something that might have been about the demolition of an entire mountain or about how shiny blood was underneath sunlight (it was hard to tell with him). 

“Repetitions; we have survived; three times before, they have not,” Zero reminded Mordecai as they both left the extremely damaged truck behind and began the trek up the hill and into Overlook. 

Mordecai huffed, shouldering his rifle. “Yeah, and you know what the definition of insanity is, so…” 

Zero didn’t reply and Mordecai wasn’t expecting one; conversations with the assassin were never longer than two exchanges. He doesn’t know if it was because of the way he spoke or because he just didn’t feel like saying anything more than a sentence, but often Mordecai was left hanging. He stopped taking it personally about a month in. 

His eyes wandered around, taking in the bullet holes and blood on the outside of the buses. He can’t remember if those details were there before they had been overrun at Hallow Fax, but it added perfectly to the aesthetic of faded and chipped yellow pain and grimy windows (he also has no idea how they even found this many schools buses since there are no schools anywhere in the vicinity of Pandora). 

The first building that greeted them was a catch-a-ride station and across from it was a pub with a four leaf clover symbol hanging at the end of the billboard sign. It was fairly rusted over like most metal found on Pandora, but there were quite a few people sitting around outside the establishment, dressed in similar clothes marking them as a clan and nursing beers, watching as refugees continuously headed into Overlook. 

“That was quite an entrance,” Axton greeted with a wide smile on his face, pulling Mordecai’s attention forward as the commando stood underneath the sign reading Overlook in various letters of shapes and sizes. His blonde hair was longer than normal, more untamed as if he hadn’t had the chance to cut or style it with on ongoing skirmishes they had to wage against the COV. He wore his normal attire of dark camo and carried an assault rifle in his right hand. He pulled Mordecai into a bro hug after Zero dodged the outstretched arm, putting the sniper in the line of fire. “I’m jealous.”

Mordecai got a heavy whiff of a spice body spray before being released. “I heard that you had helped with that.”

“Hell yeah, man. Gaigey had come up with the idea and I simply added my expertise for blowing shit up into the mix; I hope my ECHO recorded it,” he said with an arm thrown over the slimmer man’s shoulder, guiding him through the minimal barricade blocking bandit vehicles from entering the outpost. 

This close, Mordecai noticed the series of bruises and minor abrasions littering the pale skin of his face, disappearing down his neck and into the collar of this tactical vest. “You fight your way here too?”

Axton snorted. “I don’t think you can really consider it a fight; it was more like a brawl I had a few years back where I had to fight these four dudes with my hands tied behind my back,” Mordecai raised an incredulous eyebrow, Axton waved him off. “It’s a long story, but anyways. Yeah, those COV assholes ambushed Gaige and I on the road as we were leaving that creepy Happy Pig Motel and we had to make a few improvisations along the way, which resulted in being a little too close to some thrown grenades for comfort.” 

“That explains why you look like shit,” He joked, his accent weighing stronger on the curse. 

“You don’t look much better,” he replied, letting go of the sniper’s shoulder to grab his arm and lift it; blood gleamed under the bright sun. “Did you attempt to dance with a Rakk—they don’t like that, bro.” 

“Well, I know that now,” He smirked, playing along. 

Axton dropped his arm and shoved the older vault hunter, causing him to stagger sideways into a collection of people with a mumbled, “sorry.” But having his attention pulled away from Axton, he realized how crowded the outpost was: hundreds of people, carrying everything they may have owned on their backs or in suitcases waiting around in groups. Some sat in chairs or simply on the floor, nursing wounds, comforting friends, or looking bored—but all had this aura of confusion and nervousness about them. 

Axton guided him back to his side with a tug on his arm. “I don’t know how this place expects to hold all these people,” he said, seriously. “Karima says a lot of the older residents left after they were cured by a vault hunter, buuuuuut even if all these houses were empty, we’d still be sort by like half.” 

“Who’s Karima?” He asked, watching a group of children chase each other in the grass as they reached the top of the slope. 

“She runs the place kinda like a mayor without the whole election process,” Axton explained. “Her house is right over there,” he pointed at a tall, thin structure made up of a series of houses stacked on top of each other across the central courtyard. 

This seemed to be the area that most of people Mordecai personal knew were hanging around: Kreig was sitting with his legs dangling on top of some type of grinder mechanism and Gaige was animatedly describing something to Zero that required large hand gestures. The rest of the large, open space was filled with more former residents of Hallow Fax that had survived the attack (he couldn’t tell if any of them were actual residents of Overlook). 

Axton got his attention with a slap to his arm. “That’s Karima,” he nodded towards a short woman, walking briskly towards them. She was dressed like a rugged nurse, her hair was purple, and everything about her screamed no nonsense. 

“Commando,” she greeted Axton once she approached. He causally tipped an invisible hat in her direction. “You must be Mordecai, I’m the leader here, you can call me Karima,” she held out a hand. 

Mordecai was prepared for the firm shake she gave him before dropping his hand. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you for agreeing to take us in…” he trailed off; he was always awkward when it came to talking to anyone of importance (he was most comfortable talking to birds or to the normal losers he associated with).

Axton snorted. 

She ignored both of them. “Your commander is on my ECHO line and she wants to talk to what she referred to as ‘her crew’,” she said with a look of distaste at having to use such a word and gestured to the building she had come from. “You may use the bottom floor and please leave everything as you found it,” she finished and walked away, approaching a nearby couple who were probably residents of the outpost. 

“Is it bad that I kinda want to break everything in the place now that she said that?” Axton asked with a smirk. 

Mordecai whistled for Zero and Gaige, waving them over and then physically dragged Axton towards Karima’s house. “If we get kicked out, I’ll know who to blame.” 

\--

At nine in the morning all ECHO devices, radios, and any electronics that received a signal and translated it into video, audio or both went static, causing every Pandora resident to shake, hit, or curse at the offending technology. The ones with video replaced the static image a few seconds later with the pixelated, holographic image of the Calypso Twins. 

“Good morning, loyal followers,” Tyreen began, her brother an imposing presence standing slightly behind her. “The sacrifices and services you have provided for us have been well received and because of your efforts, we are ready to bring our cause into the light and into the lives of the residents of Pandora.”

“There are those that will resist, but it is because they are corrupted by old and false beliefs. Those that call themselves ‘The Resistance’ will attempt to strike us down at every turn; they will call you bandits, fanatics, scum, psychos, marauders. It doesn’t matter, you are under the protection of The Prophets and you will crush all those that stand in your way!”

“But don’t forget that the heart of this evil is not on Pandora but in every space station, planet, outpost, and city controlled by the corporations. They are the reason you are stuck here, they are the reason you’ve been stranded, they are the reason you’ve strayed from the light of the vault. But, we will take it back,” Tyreen finished with a smile and closed fist, her siren tattoos glowing bright enough to highlight the sharp cheekbones of her face. 

Troy stepped forward with a manic grin stretched unnaturally wide across his face to complete the message. “The war for the vault begins today, our lovely followers. Go forth, and wreck shit up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title of chapter is a song by Alex Turner (lead singer of arctic monkeys)

**Author's Note:**

> Strap in, we be in this for the long haul!  
> Thanks for reading and I love and support all of you fine ladies, gents, and anyone inbetween.


End file.
